Trying to get the hive to the car today was a much bigger challenge than the last time I used it. I had about 25 bees loose in Julia's house before we got everything squared away to take the Ob Hive to the car. There has to be an easier way. I spent about 20 minutes covered the bees with a glass and sliding a card under the glass to take them to the outdoors to release them.
We did the talk outside and set the hive up on a picnic table. I also took a medium nuc (the blue box), bee veils, honey for them to taste, and candles to feel and smell. We talked about the comb in the hive and they got to do the waggle dance. It was a lot of fun for me and I think the participants had fun too.
One of the teenage counselors took these two pictures. The first is of Dylan and me as we got started talking about the bees.
Here are the children learning to do the waggle dance to communicate!
This young man, Conner, was eager to try on a veil and to ask lots of questions.
Dylan who is only 3 was a fabulous helper and got a promised Brewster's ice cream cone as a reward when we left!
We returned the observation hive to Julia's with only two bees to return to the outdoors before we came home.
Linda,
ReplyDeleteMy wife has an observation hive she takes out quite a bit and has a nice way to prevent many bees from getting out. Here is a shot of the hive in place http://tinyurl.com/ksru45. Notice the ramp leading from the bottom of the hive to the window. Now look at this image for a close up of the bottom of the ramp. http://tinyurl.com/mxzpgy You can't see it realy well, but sitting on the top is a piece of metal we use as an entrance reducer in winter and can also be used to block off the bees from the hive for pulling it out. There is a groove and on the other side a slot in the plexiglass that lets us slide the metal in. Usually it is not this full of bees; this picture is from a time when we had to split them up because of over crowding. Anyway, once we put the metal in, the bees outside are blocked. We pull the hive and stuff paper towels inside of the PVC tubes on both the hive and ramp. We rarely lose any bees this way. However, we have notice after a few hours the bees are carrying bits of paper towel around the hive so we also often put packing tape over it just in case they manage to chew through the towels.
I'll be doing my first presentation on honey bees this Sunday... and I've been a beekeeper for one week :) However, I've been researching them for a year and a half. I'm interested to read what you took for show and tell. Thanks for the ideas.
ReplyDeleteI always take bee veils if I can because kids and grown-ups alike like to try them on. I take frames of different kinds of comb as well - old brood comb and drawn out honey comb. I take cut comb honey in a box (like I enter into honey contests) so they can see what honey looks like in the comb. I have some children's books that I use to copy handouts to give out. I like to keep it as interesting as possible. This presentation was hard to gauge because it was outdoors - no wall clock!
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