Bee and Flower Coloring Page

This bee and flower coloring page shows a round, smiling bee hovering beside a big garden flower. A dotted line trails down from its tail toward the smaller flowers. There are two smaller flowers below and a bright sun in the corner. The shapes are large and friendly, so it works well for ages 3 to 8.

Allow about 15 to 20 minutes. Young ones love the bee's rosy cheeks.

A bee and flower coloring page for beginners

Your child gets three simple jobs here. Color the bee, color the flowers, color the sky. The stripes on the bee are wide, and that makes them a nice small challenge for a child who is learning to stay inside lines.

The dotted path is a bonus. Ask your child to trace it with a finger first, then join the dots with a pencil. This builds the same hand control they will need for writing.

Picking bee colors

Bees are easy: yellow and dark brown, with very pale blue or white wings. Black is fine for the stripes too, but brown looks softer on a page like this. Keep the wings light, since real bee wings are clear enough to see through.

The flowers are where your child can go wild. We chose pink and orange for the big bloom, then red and purple for the small ones. A real honey bee sees blue and purple very well, so a bright blue flower would be a smart pick. Green stems and leaves bring it all together.

Small tips for neat stripes

• Color the dark stripes first and press hard, then fill in the yellow bands.
• Wipe your crayon tip on scrap paper after using brown, so it does not muddy the yellow.
• Skip the white parts of the eyes, which give the bee its sparkle.
• Color the petals from the center out, so the strokes follow the petal shape.

What bees do all day

A honey bee colony can hold tens of thousands of bees. Almost all of them are workers. One worker makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its whole life. That sounds tiny, but it adds up when the whole hive helps.

Bees also talk to each other by dancing. When a bee finds good flowers, it flies back to the hive and does a waggle dance. The angle and length of the dance tell the others which way to go and how far. A scientist named Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for working this out.

They have five eyes as well: two big ones and three tiny ones on top of the head. You can read more about them on Wikipedia.

Their real gift to us is pollination. As bees move from bloom to bloom, they carry pollen that helps plants make fruit and seeds. Apples, berries and almonds all depend on it.

Activities for home or class

Try the bee dance. One child hides a paper flower somewhere in the room, comes back and waggles to show the way. The other kids guess the direction. It is silly, and it gets everyone moving after sitting down to color.

For early math, count the petals on the bee and flower coloring page, then the dots on the flight path. Write each number next to the shape. You can also talk about what to do when a bee comes near: stay calm, move slowly and let it fly away.

Older kids might enjoy finding out what the hive does in winter. Short hint: they huddle together and shiver to stay warm.

Hang the finished picture by a window. Then watch a real flower for five minutes on a warm day and see what lands on it. Bees are busy, so you may not wait long.

Keep buzzing around

The daisy coloring page has another happy face to color, and the flower pot is a simple pick for small hands. See them all in our flower coloring pages.

Questions