Field Trip to Kevin's Bees

We are super lucky, because one of Sam's coworkers keeps bees, and he said we could come visit his hives! We were SO excited, and then there was a lot of anticipation because this field trip was put off a couple times---once for a rainstorm, and once for sickness. So by the time we actually got to the bees, we'd been waiting a couple weeks!

Kevin and his wife Heather are the nicest beekeepers ever. They told us lots of interesting things about bees and beekeeping, and then best of all, they let the older boys suit up in a beekeeper's suit and help check inside the hives!! It was pretty much the coolest thing they have ever done.

Before we opened up the hives, we all went over to have a closer look. We stayed to the side, since bees don't like people blocking the path to their hive's entrance.

We could see the Guard Bees standing faithfully at their posts

Kevin demonstrated how to use the smoker, and showed us how to pump slowly so the smoke wouldn't be too hot.

Abe suited up first. We had to use some twine to hold up his pants! :) We hadn't come prepared with long pants because we didn't know we'd get to get so close to the bees!

Abe holding the smoker and letting smoke out to calm the bees

Kevin pulled off the supers one by one to check the honey inside.

He showed us the bees on their comb, and the wax caps covering the honey cells. The older boys also got to see brood cells and a few drones.

Queen cells on the side of the frames

Some comb Kevin pulled off the edge of one of the frames

Seb helps check the other hive

Another beautiful piece of comb

An unfortunate end (or perhaps you could say, the perfect end) to this awesome day was when Daisy and then Junie both got stung! We stayed far away from the hives with them, but somehow they got stung anyway. Maybe it was the bright colors they wore (bees find white and neutrals more calming). But Daisy had been SO excited to wear her bee shirt and bee hair clip. The saddest thing was after she got stung (on the back of her neck), she was crying and saying, "But I thought the bees would LOVE me!" We finally convinced her that the bees DID love her; they just got so excited that one of them stung her accidentally. :)  I read that bees release a pheromone when they sting that other bees smell and think "danger"---so then they are more likely to sting too. I'm guessing that's why Junie got stung after Daisy did---the bees were excited by the first sting. Who knows.

Anyway, luckily we're all very resilient and don't have any allergies to bee stings (that we know of), so we rubbed some witch hazel on the girls' stings and they felt better within 10 minutes. By the time we got home, everyone was talking fondly about the bees and the "poor bees" that died when they stung the girls, and asking if we could go back and visit again soon. :)

I was excited when I brushed off Junie's sting site because I could see a bee's stinger fall into my hand (which I've never seen before). I thought this would be a better picture but I guess the stinger is just too tiny. Here is a better picture of a stinger, for your enjoyment.

Sebby and Malachi played beekeeper for the next several days :)

Making Rolled Beeswax Candles

During our Civil War Unit earlier, we tried our hands at candle-dipping---so to go with our discussion of Beeswax during this Bee Unit, we decided to make rolled beeswax candles. I remember making these with my mom when I was young. It is a really fun, easy craft. We had this kit which includes the beeswax sheets and the wicks.

Speaking of beeswax sheets, here is a video we enjoyed about how they are made!

And this is one of the coolest things we've ever seen: a video about how those beautiful layered carved candles are made. It looks so simple, but it must take tons of practice to do it so perfectly. I had never seen one of these candles before seeing this video, but now I want one! :)

We made several long candles, a few shorter ones, and then a bunch of teeny-tiny ones from the scraps! It was fun to cut smaller shapes out of the beeswax and stick them on the outsides of the candles for decoration. We found it was easier to make things stick together if we heated them up for a few seconds with the hairdryer first.

We had fun burning these candles during our Bee Celebration at the end of the unit!

Dipping Beeswax Candles with Children

This was another of our "daily-life-in-Civil-War-times" activities. Dipping candles is really fun. We weren't very well prepared for it because I didn't have a nice long, thin-but-not-too-thin glass contained to dip from. We tried a quart jar first, but I didn't have enough wax to fill it all the way, and then we used this old vase, which was too narrow and made the wax cool too quickly. I actually had bought a tall, thin drinking glass at the thrift store for this very purpose, but although it was on my receipt, it somehow never made it home with me. I must have left it at the checkout register. Grrr, I hate it when that happens! (It was only 50 cents and I didn't realize I didn't have it till a few days later, so it didn't seem worth going back for.)

We did have a lot of fun anyway, though, and the boys were SO proud of their beeswax candles. They looked great and burned very nicely too. We burned them at our end-of-unit celebration dinner.

Here are two good overviews of how to dip candles with children:
This one uses crayons for color
and this one leaves them off-white, like ours.