This is like, one of the coolest experiences I have ever had.

Bees play a major role in pollinating our crops.

We're playing hide-and-seek with the queen bee.

Honey!

Wow!

[SciGirls laugh] We'll take this.

(Izzie) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding provided by L'Oreal USA.

For girls in science... you can learn more at ForGirlsInScience.org And by PPG Industries Foundation-- committed to bringing positive impact to our communities.

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you (girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) Come on!

When I need help, and I've got a question there's a place I go for inspiration Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation What girls?

(Izzie) SciGirls!

Whoo!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) I need you!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) Come on!

You've gotta log on, post, upload, pitch in!

Yeah!

Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?

The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, (girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) SciGirls!!

Um, is that a fruitcake?

Oh, uh, yeah.

It's July.

I know; surprisingly, fruitcakes are very cheap this time of the year.

What are you doing anyway?

I'm lookin' for a pet snack.

Oh, something for Fang?

Nope, I'm getting a new pet.

Oh, you talked your mom into it?

Well, not exactly.

She said I could get a pet if I keep it outside.

That's where this comes in.

Oh, what kind of animal did you get?

None yet, but I'm hoping to use this steak to snag me a raccoon, or a bear.

A bear would be an awesome pet!

Ho-ho, Jake!

Why don't we see if the SciGirls have any ideas.

On how to catch a bear?

No!

On what kind of outdoor pet would be good for you.

Let's see, um... oh!

What about bees?

What?

Bees?

That's crazy talk.

Who would be nuts enough to want to have bees as a pet?

Here beary, beary, beary.

[chuckles] Here SciGirls... hello, here we go!

Watch for the arrows!

They're clues for the "Pick'M, Stick'M" game on the website.

(Briana) Phoenix, it's pretty much desert.

If you're not used to the weather at all, you're going to be very, very hot.

I'm Briana, and I like to laugh, just like to have fun.

1, 2, 3, SciGirls!

For fun I like to read or draw or just like listen to music.

My name's Monica, I'm 14, and I live in Phoenix, Arizona.

(Damaris) I love being with my friends and my family.

I love playing basketball, and I like to read.

My name is Damaris.

I'm a people person, I always look for the answer, and I'm not really satisfied until I find it.

(Briana) Roosevelt Road Growhouse is a community garden.

I think it's a really great idea to have more gardening in the city.

Twist it, shake it.

[laughs] I don't know.

(Damaris) Every Sunday, the Growhouse has volunteers that go work at the garden and the girls and I, we decided to do it too.

Can I put it in since it was small?

Yeah, sure, you can still eat the leaves, you can eat the green part, even if the root isn't big enough.

(Monica) Omayra is a math professor at Arizona State University and she was helping us volunteer.

You're going to do one of these--push it in, then twist it up-- we're trying to break up the soil.

For health class we made our first connection with the Growhouse, and we were there learning about growing our own food and eating healthy.

(Omayra) I love beets; these are my most favorite vegetable.

(Briana) I've never tried them before.

(Monica) Me either.

(man) This looks great, good work!

Well, this is great garden.

Well, thank you.

Kenny is the guy in charge of this community garden, and he's the guy who taught us how to plant.

You know the one thing that we haven't done that I'd really like to do?

What?

Get bees, yeah, have a beehive.

I know a professor at ASU who maintains a bee lab, she might be able to help you set up an urban beehive.

Really?

(Omayra) Yeah, right here at the Growhouse.

Can we help?

I would love for you to help.

Awesome!

Great, let's do it.

All right!

I'm bringing bees to Growhouse.

Gro?

Yes... welcome.

I'm Gro, or you can just call me the bee queen.

(Damaris) Gro is the bee queen.

She is a bee researcher at Arizona State University.

So I hear you're interested in bees.

(SciGirls) Yes!

By our school we have a community garden, and we were wondering if we could keep a beehive there.

You can, absolutely.

People can keep bees in the city?

It's a wonderful hobby.

You need a home for your bees.

Gro helped us get started on our beehive, which we got to paint.

♪ ♪ So we painted the hive box BioScience colors, which is purple and green.

We all go to BioScience High School, home of the DoubleHelix Dragons.

Roar!

BioScience High School is a school that prepares you for a career such as science, medical, or engineering.

(Damaris) We had to have our bee suits pinned and we had gloves, and it was like a big white suit that had to be zipped up all around our neck and everything.

I'm excited; I mean, I'm not really afraid of them, but I feel safer.

(Gro) Alright, so let's go meet the bees, are you ready?

(SciGirls) Yeah.

(Gro) All right.

Hi, my name is Damaris, and not only am I a SciGirl, but I do a lot of other things.

This is our fashion show.

(woman) Work it, Damaris!

(Damaris) My very first fashion show at that.

Another thing that's really important to me is the piano.

This is my family.

Hello!

Hello.

Hi!

[laughs] [laughs] Thank you for watching.

[drone of many bees buzzing] I think this is like, probably one of the coolest experiences I have ever had.

I mean, I totally love it so far, it's awesome.

To meet bees, you need a couple of things-- a smoker, and a hive tool.

And the smoke is to calm them, so it's like a little forest fire that keeps, makes the bees think of other things than us.

So the first comb here doesn't have much bees, but it has a lot of honey!

(Monica) Inside the beehives, there's frames.

Some of the frames have comb or where they store the honey.

Some other the frames have unborn babies.

(Gro) Okay, so you see this one, we have different kinds of bees in the hive.

All of these are girls.

(Damaris) The different type of bees in the hive, one is, of course, the queen bee.

She is bigger than everyone else and lays all the babies.

She is pretty much the leader.

And here is actually a guy.

Next are the drones, which are the male bees.

They're kinda scarce throughout the hive, but their main job is just to go out and mate with other queens.

Over here, do you see this bee?

It has pollen on her legs, that's a forager.

She's been out collecting pollen.

(Damaris) Next there are the workers.

They're all women and they take care of the babies and then there are the foragers, which are also worker bees, but they specifically go out and collect the food or pollen.

(Gro) These are doing much more than just making honey.

The pollen is often from crops.

Every third bite of what we eat comes from crops that bees pollinate.

(Damaris) Bees play a major role in pollinating our crops.

One of every third bite that we have, we owe it to the bees, because of pollinating everything that we need to get our food.

So bees are a lot more than just honey.

So we're looking for a bee with a white mark on her back.

(Damaris) I found her!

(Gro) She's the queen, oh, you have the queen, we have the queen!

(Briana) Why does the queen have a dot on her?

(Gro) Oh, we painted her; it's easier to tell her apart from the other bees.

(Briana) What's she doing?

(Gro) Uh, the queen is looking for a place to lay a new egg.

So she needs to find a cell where there's no egg already, and she'll lay an egg in there.

(Damaris) Do you know about how many eggs she lays a day?

(Gro) A thousand, sometimes more.

(Monica) We can see a bee being born!

(Damaris) Oh my gosh!

(Monica) Oh my gooossh!

(Gro) That's a new bee.

(Briana) We saw a baby being born.

It was really cute because the little girl would go out and then come back in.

That's so cute.

(Gro) You want to move this hive, or "the colony," over into your hive box.

(Damaris) We had to open up the hive box, and we were searching to make sure that we had a queen in our hive.

So we had to pull out each individual frame and look for the queen bee.

Hey, I think this is her, right?

Yeah, that's her.

(Gro) Congratulations, you have a queen!

(Damaris) Without the queen bee the hive completely falls apart because she is the mother of everyone and she is the one that lays eggs.

So the queen bee is very important.

Ta-da!

[SciGirls laugh] This is beautiful; take this, take this.

Ummmm!

That's amazing.

(Damaris) The honey that we had, it was like the greatest thing ever.

It had so much more flavor than just the honey that you get with the little bear bottle.

We were told just stick your finger in it, just slide, and so we did-- it was great!

In the back of the Growhouse, there's a very big open space and there is a perfect table in the back of there, right by a beautiful vine, and so we sat it there, 'cause the flowers on the vine were purple, our box is purple-- it goes good.

I'm like, really happy with the fact that we contributed something new to our community, especially bees-- that's pretty different.

(Briana) I hope the bees actually come out.

(Damaris) I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

[buzzing] [Jake screams] Didn't you watch the SciGirls?

Uh-huh.

But bees are good!

Yeah, I got that.

So what's the problem?

(Jake) Scared is the problem.

You're afraid of a bee, but not of a bear?

Do bees give bear hugs?

No, they do not!

Bear hugs are nice.

Not when they're from actual bears!

Bees are awesome and so important!

You see this flower?

Only here because of bees!

Honey-- bees!

Watermelons-- bees!

Really?

Maybe bees do have socially redeeming values.

Yeah, I can get into bees.

I get to have my own queen!

[buzzing] Still, bears don't swarm, what if I get stung?

Well, are you allergic?

No, but these could be mutant bees.

They could be Hoboken bees.

I bet those buggers would be really mean!

Go away!

Hah!

Shoo!

Go away, go away!

Not helping!

Ahhhh!

I'm being attacked by a mutant swarm of Hoboken bees.

SciGirls, Jake really needs some help here.

[buzzing] (Omayra) So how was your day yesterday?

(Damaris) We had a lot of fun, saw a baby bee being born.

(Omayra) Oh my gosh!

(Monica) Then Omayra came out and we kinda showed her our beehives, and then we made a plan to kind of figure out how many plants and food sources are available for the bees.

We want to look in the area around the Growhouse, and we know that bees tend to forage within a 3-kilometer radius around their hive.

But that's a lot of area, so let's scale it down and look at a 1-kilometer area around the Growhouse.

We decided to see the diversity of how many flowers, plants, trees there are and the number of them for each block.

I think it would be useful if you girls used a chart, and you separate out the residential blocks, the empty lot blocks, the garden or park blocks and the industrial blocks, and you look at the types of plants and you use that rating from zero to 3.

Our rating was between zero to 3, and 3 meant that there was a lot of varieties of plants, and zero meaning that there was little to none.

And you also look at the number of plants, so that you collect these 2 types of data for each block.

We're going to count each and every plant, or are we going to estimate it?

We're going to have to estimate.

Counting each and every plant would take us all day, maybe even all week.

You guys ready?

Yeah!

(Damaris) We sampled 2 blocks of each kind.

There were residential, industrial, park and garden, and empty lots.

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 8, 9.

(Damaris) The Growhouse flower beds had too many flowers to count.

So we measured a small section of the flower bed, and then we counted how many plants were in that little part, then we measured how big the entire thing was and multiplied the two.

So you think that this residential block is very diverse, and you'd rate it a 3 or it's really not diverse at all and you'd rate it a zero?

I would say 3.

Yeah, in comparison to other blocks.

(Briana) So we were counting how many trees, bushes, plants, flowers, whatever was there.

(Damaris) Alright, from here, all the trees back, that's 54.

For an empty lot, it has a lot going on.

(Briana) Yeah.

What was surprising was that for empty lots the diversity was close to zero because there was only one type of plant.

Hello ladies, how are you doin'?

(Damaris) Omayra helped us look at our data and helped us kind of organize it and put it all together.

She helped us with some math-- her specialty.

Did you get some good data?

We got some surprising data.

Tell me about it.

(Briana) The residential average for the number of plants was 1000 and 1.5.

(Omayra) Hm, that's a lot.

(Briana) and the diverse was 2.75.

A shocking one was empty, it had 355 for the number and a diverse of .75.

(Omayra) So not so diverse, but still more plants than you would expect.

Yup.

Yeah, it beat parks and gardens.

(Omayra) So empty lots have more plants than business and industrial blocks and parks and garden blocks.

(Monica) The winner was by far residential blocks.

They had a lot more diversity and number of plants.

We're going to use this aerial satellite map to color in this map that has the street names and everything.

We took a map, and we colored in the areas, the residential, industrial, empty and so on.

For the color-coding, we went by the amount of plants and so residential got green, 'cause it was full of a lot of plants, then after that, surprisingly, was the empty lots.

And so we colored that orange, following the green color, and then industrial, we made that like a peachish color.

Last was the parks and garden; because they didn't have a lot of plants, we colored it gray.

For the diversity it got a 2.75, so we're going to put a big star.

We put stars on the maps for diversity.

So like, for residential there was a lot, so we put a big star on it.

And then parks and gardens and industrial actually got the medium size because they both have the same diversity.

And empty lots had the smallest star because there was little to no diversity.

You know, in certain areas, there's like a lot of plants and then others there's not so much.

I mean, I kinda feel like maybe we could plant some more flowers or stuff around.

We wanted to get more plants and flowers for the bees, because we feel that they are kind of limited in certain areas.

Well, what kind of plants do you think we should pick?

Like, do you think it'll be based on color?

That led us back to Gro, so we could figure out if they had a preference for certain plants or colors.

Hi, my name is Monica, and not only am I a SciGirl, but I like to do a lot of other things, come on, I'll show you.

This here is what I have been painting.

Of course, it's not completed, but it's supposed to be a painting from the downtown area.

And here are my painting tools.

I like reading books, I have a lot to read from.

This is my guitar.

Well, that's it for me, I have to go, so bye!

Today we're at the bee lab doing a color preference test with Gro.

To do a color test, we need colors.

For the test set-up we have a yellow Petri dish and a blue one.

And in there I think it was about 65 milliliters of sugar water.

And we're going to leave those out for about 15 minutes, and we're going to let the bees fly around, and whichever one they land on at first, we're going to paint them the color dish that they land on.

And we're going to record if they stay faithful to that same color blue or if they switch and go to yellow.

You two will be putting the actual mark on the bees.

You would need to mark the bees when they land and you just use little sticks for that.

We will need to open up the paint, let the droplet color on the stick, and you would just paint the bee just behind its head.

Just don't paint her wings or her head.

(Briana) Another blue, another blue.

(Damaris) A blue is on yellow.

(Monica) Briana's job was to mark them with actual paint on their backs of the color that they visited and to shout out if they came back to that color.

Another bee returns and another bee returns.

(Damaris) After the first couple minutes or whatever, I kinda noticed they didn't really like the yellow.

Can you mark her new for me?

(Monica) Yeah.

(Damaris) So I could kinda see that they preferred the blue.

(Monica) Time's up.

[buzzer sounds] During the first 15 minutes of the test, we found that 20 bees went to the blue dish and 8 went to the yellow dish.

Afterwards, we were changing the location and we put the yellow dish where the blue one was and vice versa.

We wanted to see if they would remain faithful to the color, or to the location.

The second time we didn't paint at all, 'cause we weren't marking any more new bees, we just wanted to see the ones that were already previously marked, where they would go.

(Briana) The bees, to me I think they found it more important the color, because once we changed the yellow over here, they all went back to the blue over there.

(Damaris) So for the most part, the blues kept going to blue, and yellows stayed with yellow.

(Monica) Hi Gro!

(Gro) Hey, how did it go?

(Monica) We actually just finished.

(Gro) Let's have a look at the data.

(Monica) For blue we had 20 new bees coming into the blue Petri dish, and 52 of those blues came back to their own color.

And then a few yellows strayed to the blue.

And then after we changed the location, a lot of the blues still came back to its true color.

(Gro) Alright, so they stuck to it.

(Monica) Yup.

Does the color really matter?

Bees are very adaptable, they're very flexible.

They're constantly looking for new opportunities.

So the most important thing for bees is that they can find something sweet, and I'm sure they can in your garden.

(Briana) We decided to buy some plants that we thought the bees might find attractive according to the test we did.

(Damaris) Because we found out that the bees might prefer blue, we were looking for blue flowers.

(Monica) So what about these?

(Damaris) Whoop, one cool thing is, I see some bees over here.

We didn't exactly find blue, but we found purple.

And at the store there were already bees over it, so we could tell that the bees would like them.

And so we got some lavender flowers.

Yeah.

We planted the flowers that we bought by the fireplace.

I think we're good with how deep it is.

We just kind of dug in, and we had to make sure it was wide enough and deep enough for the plant.

Then we just put it in, and we covered it back up.

(Kenny) Come and get it, honey-flavored ice cream.

Okay!

(Damaris) We got to have honey ice cream, which is pretty awesome.

And then tragedy struck.

This is good.

I'm licking my fingers a lot.

I took one lick and the whole ice cream fell on the floor.

Ice cream funeral.

We had a little ice cream funeral for it and everything, covered it up, it was pretty funny.

Cone cheer?

Don't fall, don't fall!

(Monica) We met up with Gro, and we checked out beehive to see if our queen was still there and if our bees were progressing.

(Damaris) When we got over to the hive, the first thing we had to do was smoke the bees.

Okay.

When we first opened it, I noticed that there were a lot more bees than before.

Then we started searching the frames so we could find the queen.

(Monica) Can you guys see her?

(SciGirls) No.

No.

(Monica) Can you guys spot her?

(Gro) We're still fishing.

We're queen seekers.

We were playing hide-n-seek with the queen bee.

She would not let us find her.

(Briana) Look, there she is, there's the queen!

It took us a while, but we found her and then we knew that the beehive was still functioning.

(Gro) Oh, the bees have been useful.

You see they have started building?

These are going to be new cells for our baby bees or for honey.

I was really shocked because it's been like, less than 4 days and they're already working on it.

(Gro) Congratulations, your hive is happy and the queen is there.

(SciGirls) Yea!

(Damaris) Thank you for everything Gro.

It was such fun doing this with you guys, and keep me posted-- you can always call the bee queen if you get into trouble.

All right, talk to you later.

Thank you.

(Damaris) We decided to gather our information and pictures and things and put 'em kind of on a woodcut that would be outside, next to our beehive at the Growhouse.

(Briana) We put a group picture of us, pictures of a few bees, and then we put our experiment that we did.

We want people to know the basics about the bees and the different types of jobs they have and like, random facts.

All right!

Yeah!

This is our map, we went around, and we calculated all the plants to see how diverse they were.

This is our amazing photo, we decided to title this "Buzzin'."

This is our color experiment, these are flyers that are here at the Growhouse.

And all of these are random facts.

All right, so this is the beehive you guys will be taking care of, it's BioScience colors.

We have "BHS" right here, "Roar for the Dragon," "Growhouse," "Kenny," and our names.

Omayra, Kenny, and Miss Krieger our teacher from BioScience were at the presentation, and we gave them their bee suits and the things that they would need to take care of the hive.

We'd actually like to show you our presentation board, which is right over there.

Oh cool.

We told them about some facts and things that we learned.

We wanted to see what bees would prefer, and they preferred blue over yellow.

So we went around the blocks and counted the plants.

Did you find that downtown Phoenix was a good place for bees?

Some areas in downtown Phoenix were good, which is what made us want to plant more for our bees.

Miss Krieger wants to incorporate the bees into a lesson plan next year.

Really good.

We had some honey for our future bee troopers.

They really enjoyed it.

Me and the girls, we ate too, it was pretty good.

I'm just going to go for seconds.

[all laugh] The coolest thing for me this week was that I got to be so close to the bees.

(Monica) My favorite part of the week was when we put on the suits and we went to go check out the bees, plus saw a baby bee being born.

I feel like I had found a new appreciation for bees, because I saw things in a different way.

People that are afraid of them and running and screaming from them, if they found out that we owe a lot of our food to them, they would feel a little different.

Got your clues?

Head on over to the Web and play "Pick'M, Stick'M" at pbskidsgo.org.

Om... om... Hey look at you, you're calm.

I'm at one with the bees.

Plus I've named all 500 of them.

That's Jakester, the third.

O...kay.

Once you name your pets, they are yours.

Hm, it looks good, and your mom is happy?

Yeah, you should taste the honey we're gettin' outta that thing.

Everything turned out great.

I wanted one pet, I got a hive, what could be bad?

Uh, you not getting rid of that steak.

Really?

Why?

[low, deep growl] (both) Bear!

Aaaaahh!

What are you doing?

Being crazy!

Okay go!

[SciGirls laugh and joke around] Whooo!

Brake!

We love biking and we love ice cream.

Eco-friendly ice cream maker powered by your feet.

We decided that if we custom-built one, it'll be more efficient and better suited to our experiment.

That is not ice cream.

Oh my gosh!

It's the future of ice cream technology.

A crime has been committed, and it's up to you to solve it.

The mask for this camp is missing.

Urgent that we need to find it.

You're going to be doing the testing on this evidence.

Careful, careful, careful, we need to preserve the evidence.

It's crunch time and we don't even know if we can find the mask.

SciGirls!

(Izzie) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding provided by L'Oreal USA.

For girls in science... you can learn more at ForGirlsInScience.org And by PPG Industries Foundation-- committed to bringing positive impact to our communities.