Last summer I was invited to our daughters school to discuss bees during a summer camp. I was beyond excited to share what I know and spread education around bees. This was something I was very interested in doing.
I drove down to Florida and picked up my observation hive, a hive with a clear top so you are able to view inside a small, mobile hive. I then made my way to the local craft store to pick out some colors with an idea in my head of how I wanted it to look. I think it took me roughly 4 hours to complete but I was in love with how it turned out.
I drove down to Florida and picked up my observation hive, a hive with a clear top so you are able to view inside a small, mobile hive. I then made my way to the local craft store to pick out some colors with an idea in my head of how I wanted it to look. I think it took me roughly 4 hours to complete but I was in love with how it turned out.
We attended the summer camp and brought in our new observation hive. The summer camp was a blast. I talked about the things bees made, showed them different kind of bees inside the hive and explained a little about what they were doing. At the end I let all the kids line up and taste the honey that I brought with me. Even though they enjoyed learning, I do think that the taste testing was by far the winner of the day.
During the next school year we were invited back. This time the kids were much younger so I knew they would have tiny bits of information about bees. Again, we brought in our observation hive. This time we placed a brood frame in the top in order to show off the baby bees hatching. I started off with the following questions:
1. What type of bees do I have? Honey Bees!
2. Why do we call them Honey Bees? Because they make sweet delicious honey!
3. Do you know what the three different honey bees are? The queen, the worker, and the drone.
By this point, I pulled out my handy dandy photo that I printed out of what each of the bees look like. I pointed to each one with the following questions:
4. What is the job of the Queen? She makes babies that turn into either worker bees or drones.
5. What does the worker bees do? They take care of the hive, the queen, they make beeswax and honey!
6. What is so different about a drone? They are the only boy bees! All of the workers and the queen are girls.
Now that I was able to establish this and the kids seemed to understand well I then moved onto asking about this:
7. What are the things that we get from honey bees? Pollinating of flowers to help them grow, beeswax to make candles, lotions, and more, and honey!
After we discussed everything throughly and I answered all the questions, I thought it would be fun to move onto some interesting facts:
1. When bees visit flowers, they can harvest two things: pollen and nectar. Pollen is used as a food to bees and we can use it too sometimes when we have sniffly noses. Nectar is what bees take back to the hive and turn into honey. They will work hard in the hive passing the nectar back and forth until it becomes a thicker honey.
2. Bee hives are made up of a group of bees called a colony. One colony of bees can hold an average amount of 50,000 bees!!
3. When bees harvest nectar from different flowers, they will become different colors. All of one type of flowers can be a totally other color than another type of flower. We can tell what type of flowers honey came from by the color, taste, and what was in bloom during that time. Orange Blossoms tastes like oranges and a Tupelo will have a really pretty lime green hue when its held to the sun. (showing the different bottles of honey)
4. There are many forms of protective clothing when we handle bees. We like to use full suits and jacket suits. (showing a photo of Danny and I in our suits)
By the end of my lecture I was teaching basics and explaining advanced materials to teachers who were eager with questions. I was just as eager with answers not sparing any details. Lastly, we had us another taste testing. This time bringing several different flavors.
Even though our goal was to teach children about bees and how they work, I learned that I really enjoyed talking about bees. I believe its very important to share knowledge with others in efforts to spread awareness on why we NEED bees. It is more than just "save the bees", we need to understand the bees and how they work if we are truly going to help.