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 :)

Honeybee Celebration

This was a fun celebration because there are so many recipes that use honey! We only chose a few to make, of the many recipes I had bookmarked to try. I also appreciated the way the boys used our paper honeycomb as a tablecloth.

The recipes we tried are:

Honey-sesame chicken (delicious!)

Honey salad dressing (pretty good, but I've had better)

Honey-drizzled flatbread--best eaten warm. I doubled the recipe but shouldn't have, because we had too much left over and it wasn't as good the next day.

Honey panna cotta--this was awesome---see separate post here

Honeyed hot cocoa (really interesting---it was almost a savory taste, hardly sweet at all. And very rich. I would make it again, in the right context---it was very unexpected.)

There are more ideas on my pinterest board.

We had fun making these jellybean bees, which we used as garnish on our plates and the food plates

What a delicious feast! Thank you, honeybees!

Beehives, Polygons, and Comb Construction Project

Beehives and comb cells are some of the most amazing things! To discover how hexagons are one of the strongest shapes for building with, we made various polygons out of paper---but first we investigated something intriguing I read in this book. The author says: 

"Recently, it has been suggested that the hexagonal cells are an 'emergent property,' that is, at the right temperature . . . the hexagons form on their own. First the bees make cylindrical tubes around themselves and then the hexagonal angles form. Chemically, the beeswax transforms from an amorphous (or unorganized) state into a crystalline state."

To test this, we rolled some clay cylinders out, about pencil size.

We put them into a group and squeezed them slowly together.

You can see that they have (kind of) formed hexagons! If our cylinders were more precise, and our squeezing more uniform, I think it would have been even more obvious.

We also had a good close look at this abandoned wasp's nest we found outside.

Next, we made polygons out of thin strips of paper. We measured the paper strips and figured out how many inches we'd need each side to be for squares, triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons. We each made a couple examples of each type of polygon. Then we joined polygons of the same type together to see how they fit. We put a little foam ball inside each cell to see which cells were the roomiest for holding larvae and pupae.

We discovered that hexagons provide the least wasted space and the most interior space, for the least amount of material needed (perimeter) to make them.

After that, we made comb cells with different colors of paper to represent their different functions. Honey cells were yellow, pollen cells were orange, and brood cells were pink. We arranged these cells in their relative places in the hive (see page 32-33 of this packet for an example).

It was fun and oddly satisfying to make hexagon after hexagon and then tape them together. We would have kept going for longer if we hadn't gotten hungry for lunch.

We hung our finished comb up in a doorway. It got a little stretched out, but we didn't mind.

This is a queen cell hanging off the bottom. With a queen emerging from it.

 We had so much fun with our big beehive that we made smaller ones too. These were made with half-size and half-width strips of paper. We put them on top of white paper so we could draw what each kind of cell was holding inside. Here is Malachi's beehive with honey cells, pollen cells, and brood cells. I love it!