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A honey bee spends its days visiting flowers. It lands on a blossom and sips a sweet liquid called nectar. The bee stores the nectar in a special honey stomach, which is separate from the stomach it uses to digest food.

When the bee flies back to the hive, it passes the nectar to another bee. That bee chews it for a while and then spreads it into a six-sided wax cell. The nectar is still thin and watery at this point.

Worker bees then fan their wings over the cells. The moving air dries out the extra water. Slowly, the nectar thickens into honey. When the honey is ready, the bees seal the cell with a cap of wax.

Honey is the food the bees save for winter, when few flowers bloom. A single bee makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its whole life. It takes a huge team of bees to fill a hive.

A fossil is what is left of a living thing from long ago. Most fossils are found in rock. Some are bones or shells. Others are footprints, or the shape of a leaf pressed into stone.

How does a fossil form? Imagine a fish that dies in a shallow sea. Soft parts, such as skin, usually rot away. But the bones may be covered quickly by mud or sand. Over a very long time, more layers pile on top. Water seeps in, and minerals in the water slowly harden the mud and fill the bones. In the end, the bones turn to stone.

Much later, wind and water may wear away the rock above, and the fossil may show up.

Scientists who study fossils are called paleontologists. They dig carefully and brush away the dirt. Fossils show them which animals and plants lived long ago and how living things have changed. A fossil of a sea creature found on a mountaintop tells us that the place was once covered by the sea.

Unlike animals, plants make their own food. The process is called photosynthesis, and it happens mostly in the leaves.

A plant needs three things for photosynthesis: sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. Roots soak up water from the soil, and the water travels up the stem to the leaves. Carbon dioxide is a gas in the air. It enters the leaf through tiny holes that are far too small to see without a microscope.

Inside the leaf, cells hold a green substance called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll captures energy from sunlight. The plant uses that energy to turn water and carbon dioxide into sugar. The sugar is the plant's food. It gives the plant energy to grow, and some of it is stored in roots, stems, fruits, and seeds.

Photosynthesis makes something else, too. As the plant makes sugar, it lets oxygen out into the air through the same tiny holes. Animals, including people, need oxygen to breathe.

So plants feed themselves, and they help every animal on Earth. They give us the oxygen we breathe, and they are the starting point of most food chains.