- Hi everyone, my name is Kim, and today we are at my farm, Bell Urban Farm.

It's a farm, but it's also in the middle of the city, and that's what makes it urban.

That's kind of weird, right?

Normally you think of farms as being in the country.

You can think of a farm as anything that grows vegetables or produce, or has animals.

(cows mooing) Here we grow tons of beautiful flowers that we make into bouquets to sell, just like this one.

We have a farm crew that helps us take care of the garden and produce the flowers and veggies that we sell at the store on our farm.

We also have chickens and beehives on our farm.

We even have a train that runs behind the farm.

(train honking) Oh look, there's one now.

(train running) So I heard you guys wanted to learn about the life cycle of a flower.

Well, it's really pretty cool and flowers are my favorite thing to grow.

We grow all of the flowers on the farm here from tiny seeds just like these sunflower seeds.

So what we do is we just take one tiny seed and plant it into the soil in containers we call trays.

These are some seeds that we started last week.

We put each little seed into its own circle in this tray, we gave it some water and sunshine and they sprouted.

Now, all we have to do is wait for them to get a little bit taller and then we just pull each one out and plant it into the soil on our farm.

So when we plant it in the ground, it develops deep long roots that help it suck up water and nutrients and it grows taller and taller into the air.

Eventually these buds open and they blossom into flowers.

And each flower produces something called pollen.

So what is pollen?

Well, basically it's just a tiny dust that all flowers produce and this helps flower plants to produce seeds and things like vegetables to produce fruit.

How does the pollen move from flower to flower?

Well, that's where pollinators come in.

They help move the pollen from flower to flower so the flower can produce seeds.

What are pollinators?

Pollinators can be insects like bees or butterflies, but they can also be cool things like birds or bats or even the wind can be a pollinator.

Pollinators are anything that helps transfer or move the pollen from flower to flower.

The wind can even blow pollen from flower to flower.

Today, we're gonna talk about bees as pollinators.

Have you ever looked closely at a bee before?

If you have, you'll notice that they kind of have fluffy hairy little bodies, with long back legs with hairs on them, so when they fly from flower to flower, it's really easy for pollen and to get stuck on them.

Bees visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen.

And as they do that, they move the pollen from plant to plant.

So, when the pollen moves from a flower to another flower, we call this pollination.

And when a flower is pollinated, it can produce new seeds and complete its life cycle.

We rely on bees for a lot of the fruit, nut and vegetable production in the United States.

So things like zucchini, squash and cucumber, we wouldn't have if we didn't have the help of bees to pollinate these things.

Did you know that even vegetable plants have flowers?

This is the eggplant seedling and look at this beautiful purple flower.

So we rely on bees to pollinate this so it can produce an eggplant.

Once a bee has pollinated this flower, it can start growing eggplants.

You see all these eggplants on this plant?

They were once flowers and they were pollinated by bees.

How cool is that?

Bees are our friends and the next time you see a bee, don't be afraid, just take a step back, give it some space and watch it work.

If you look closely you might be able to see the bee gathering pollen on its hind legs, and you can watch as it transfers that pollen from flower to flower.

Thank you so much for visiting me on my farm today.

I had so much fun talking about flowers and pollinators.

And remember, the next time you see a bee tell it thank you.

Bye guys.