In honor of Rosh Hashana, our students had the opportunity to participate in a live beehive presentation with Curtis Cowell, beekeeper extraordinaire. Mr. Curtis took us all into the heart of a beehive!! We got up close with the bees as we learned all about them. So many bees flew around as he explained how these tiny, yet powerful creatures work and live.
Mr. Curtis discussed why we need honey bees and the students gained an appreciation for the honey bee. We learned that they love to live in hollow spaces, whether that means a hollow tree, an empty fallen log, or in a traditional man-made beehive.
Contrary to popular belief, honeybees do not build an external structure that contains their hive.
They do, however, build the inside of their hive. Honeybees make their own special wax (beeswax), which they use to create perfect little hexagons inside their home. These little cubby holes are called cells, and in them, the bees store everything from eggs, to pollen, to honey.
With such a large population all working together, some great communication skills are needed. Bees do their talking in two ways - by scent and by dancing. When a honeybee is warning her sisters about an intruder, or if all the ladies in the hive are particularly happy, honeybees have the ability to release a special hormonal scent called pheromones. The bees can detect these scents and interpret their message. A happy bee pheromone smells like lemons, and a warning-smell has a banana-like scent.
When a forager bee needs to alert her sisters as to where a nectar source is, dancing comes in handy. She does special turns and wiggles to show where she found the food - essentially drawing a map. We got to check out the observation hive and watch for dancing bees!