Field Trip!

We were blessed to be able to visit an actual bee keeper.  He taught us so many things about bees and collecting honey from the hives.  

• We thought that all bees were aggressive.  Aggressiveness is actually a dominant genetic trait in bees.  Keepers order bees that have the recessive form and their bees are docile (this fit in perfect with our studies of dominant/recessive genes). 

• We also learned that bees actually eat pollen.  As a biology major in college I never learned this!  I was always taught that bees pick up the pollen on their body as they go for the nectar.  This pollen is then used to fertilize the next flower.  They do fertilize the flowers, but they also actually eat the pollen and pack in onto their back legs and take it back to the hive.

• The gas that keepers spray on the hives masks their smell and also makes the bees think there is a forest fire.  They fly into the hive and start gorging themselves with honey.  This fills their abdomen and they are not able to sting.

• Keepers wear white outfits because bees are more aggressive to dark colors (they think a bear is coming to still their honey!).

• Bees leave the stinger behind when they sting you.  You should scrape it off.  Pinching the area is not a good idea; that releases the poison that is in the stinger.

 When we were looking at one of the hives we actually got to see a female bee being born!  

He showed us how they take the honey out of the hive and extract it in a centrifuge (In the picture below Joshua is looking into the centrifuge).

In addition to all the bee information we also learned a lot about making pottery. (This keeper is talented in many areas!  His pottery was beautiful!).  One fact that stuck out to the kids was that the pottery is heated to 2000 degrees.  That is 1000 degrees below the heat of the sun.

This was an amazing field trip and one we will be talking about for a long time.