Yesterday, our family went to a beekeepers house. We went with our cousins that live across the field. The man's name was Skip, and he has been keeping bees since he was a little boy, maybe 6 yrs. old (his Dad kept bees). He reminded me of David Kline (I mentioned him in one of my earlier posts.) We started of by talking about what we knew about bees, which is a big subject for him. He told us that last year he didn't get any honey because a disease swept through the hives. He was down to 4 hives last year and now because of swarming he has 12! Swarming is when the Queen Bee starts to slow down in her egg laying that half of the swarm leave the nest. They stay on a tree limb for 1 hr.- 3 or 4 days until they find a place to make a hive. He catches them and then he has another hive. Another cool thing that he told us that when the bees flap their wings with a little bit of water on them they make an air conditioner and in the winter they use their body heat, so that the hive stays about 92 degrees all year round. If your ever lookin to start bees thistles make the best honey! When we looked in the bee hives we got to see a started honey combs. Before we were able to look in the hives he got a smoker going, because the smoke helps to calm the bees. When he pulled out the file we could start to see where the foundation of the file but you could see their comb building up too. Then we got to see a comb that was filled with honey and capped. But if the queen bee has been busy then you can see larva and eggs. and sometime they have a cap on them too. The Queen lays starting in the middle and work to the out side. We got to see a queen ahe is longer and a tad fatter. We also got tto see a drone which is just fat and doesn't have a stinger! After looking at a couple different hives and asking questions and getting great answers, we finished up and headed to the house and was surprised with Lemonade and Graham Crackers. It was really fun!
OH yeah and we saw a barn swallow for the bird part.
2 comments:
Wow, Kate, that sounds really cool! City kids have NO idea what they are missing. =)
What a great experience to watch a beekeeper work with bees and learn about their habits. Wonder if you got to taste any of the honey? I've read that locally derived honey helps with allergies. Maybe that's the clover honey. We should look it up in google. One can learn a lot from google searches! Aunt Eunice
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