STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The dew was still on the grass at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden Thursday morning as fourteen 2 and 3-year-olds from Big Wood School ran from one chair decorated as a flower to another carrying tennis balls that were supposed to represent pollen.

“Run as fast as you can, you bumblebee pollinators,” one teacher cheered them on.

When finished, they stuck their “antenna” fingers above their heads and buzzed as they made their way back into the garden center.

“You guys moved the pollen, and there are going to be flowers that bloom because of that, their Bug Zoo guide Megan Schooley told them. “Was that tiring? You can imagine how tiring it must be for a pollinator who does it all day long.”

Dozens of preschool and elementary school classes have been learning about pollinators as part of the Sawtooth Botanical Garden’s popular Bug Zoo. The week will culminate with the Bug Zoo Festival from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 17, at the garden.

Youngsters will be able to try on Bug Eyes and meet crested geckos, tarantulas and Slim Shady, a California King Snake, along with death feigning beetles, which eat spiders and turn from blue to black when wet. And there’ll be fun activities, food trucks, plant and honey sales and snow cones.

Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for youth 3-18 and free for those under 3.

On Thursday Schooley tried to tell the youngsters why pollination is so important.

“Let’s pretend I’m a plant. Can I walk around? No, that’s why I need others to help,” she said. “Who likes strawberries? If we didn’t have pollinators, we wouldn’t have strawberries. If we didn’t have pollinators, we wouldn’t have watermelon. If we didn’t have pollinators, we wouldn’t have corn. Even chocolate relies on pollinators.”

Pollinators, like other insects and animals, have adaptations that make it easier to live in their environment, Schooley added.

“Butterflies fly from one flower to another—that’s easier than walking and it allows them to get to plants they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get to,” she said as she outfitted one little girl with butterfly wings. “The antlers on their heads tell insects where to go—they can smell and sense the plants.”

She outfitted the youngster with hairy arm wraps to represent the hair on the insects that collect a yellow dust called pollen when they brush up against a plant. She pulled out a straw, which she said resembled a proboscis, a feeding tube that butterflies and moths use to suck the nectar out of a flower.

“Even hummingbirds have straws like this one,” she said.

“It’s so fun to see the little kids’ eyes light up,” said Schooley, who shares teaching duties with the ERC’s Peyton Butler and the University of Idaho’s Andy West. “They get so excited about critters and their environment.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Nectar guides are lines on a flower’s petals that guide pollinators to sweet nectar. They act like lights along an airport runway that help bees land and take off in the right place.

Honeybees communicate the location of nectar to each other by doing a Wagle Dance.

There are 30 kinds of bumble bees in the western United States and 1,435 bee species documented in North America, more than half of which are declining. About 20,000 kinds of bees live on Earth.

Bright sky pollinators, or daytime pollinators are attracted to bright showy flowers and scents.

Dark Sky Pollinators include bats, moths and beetles. But light pollution is cutting down the visitations from these pollinators.  One study showed that cabbage plant plots bathed in artificial light had 62 percent fewer visitations from insects than plots situated in darkness.

A third of the food we eat is pollinated by insects, mostly bees.

Sometimes, 50,000 bees will live together in one hive.

That buzzing sounds comes from wings which bees beat more than 200 times a second.