This week is a special week in Exploring Nature With Children, it’s Museum Week! We have a very special trip planned for this week, but as we have had lots of Honey Bees visiting our garden, I thought we might as well make a start on next week’s lesson.
Along with the bees, Rose made good friends with ‘Fabulous Frog’!
Isn’t he fabulous!
We have had some smashing weather this week, so the girls have been working on lessons outdoors. Bees aplenty!
We read quite a lot from Handbook Of Nature Study and we found an interesting video to watch: How It’s Made: Honey. My dear reader Jenny keeps bees, so I would love to know how accurate it is, Jenny!
We worked on our journals, and Rose is reading some books from the Honey Bee Week booklist in Exploring Nature With Children .
Do you have a museum or field trip planned for this week?
Happy exploring!
Hi Lynn
I love your frog, have you named him Jeremy? He looks to me like Jeremy Fisher, so full of character.
Roses diagram of the bee is fantastic, such attention to detail, she has even got the hooks on the feet.
The little film was very good, not one I have seen but I like it very much, I think we will use it when we give talks, so thank you. Only one point I could find fault with was the comment on why the bee escape worked. It is not that the bees don’t like the smell of cherry, it is the bees will naturally move down at night when it is cooler. The bees always keep the brood ( larvae and eggs) at 35°C or there abouts. The bees also have to go down to go out as the entrance is below the brood box. I was in awe of the amazing set up they had for extracting the honey, I wish we were so well organised 🙂
When we extract, similar to most hobbyists, we have a spinner ( centrifuge) and then we rely on gravity to help filter out the bits of wax which get in. We jar all our honey although we have tried cut comb it wasn’t as easy as on the film! We never heat our honey higher than 30°C as this is said to destroy any health giving properties, it spoils the taste and fragrance too. We also seem to spend ages cleaning up as everything in the whole house gets sticky seemingly for days.
What the film missed off the end was the name of the gentleman who pioneered the use of the moveable frame hive, Rev. L. Langstroth. Langstroth discovered bee space which made the movable frames possible. All hives now use headspace it’s the bees own architecture. We use the hive Langstroth developed as opposed to the National hive used by most beekeepers in this country ( it has more room). There are many fascinating characters in beekeeping all would be worthy of further study by an interested nature student.
I find the subject of bees fascinating I could go on all night but I mustn’t bore anyone, though if there are any questions I would be happy to try and answer. Have a look at the British beekeepers association website the gallery is interesting you can search by keyword and there is lots on there.
We are away camping this weekend so hopefully we will get time to have a look for nature in our new surroundings. I can’t wait to hear about your visit.
Best wishes
Jenny
Thank you Jenny, that is a really interesting and helpful reply. I read your comment to Rose & she was really pleased. I plan to show her the British beekeepers website, so thank you for that!
She also says the frog is just known as ‘Fabulous Frog’ 🙂