Last week, we welcomed beekeepers, Brian and Joseph, to our school. Brian and Joseph told us lots about bees and beekeeping and we were delighted to get a chance to view lots of bees, including the queen bee, in the observation hive. We learned all about the role of the different bees in the beehive with the queen laying lots of eggs, the male drones with no other role than mating with the queen while the female worker bees do all the work such as, gathering honey and nursing other bees. Of course, we learned about the important role played by bees in pollination and hence, the need for the pollinator plan which aims to increase the number of bees and other pollinators. It was interesting to learn that bumble bees are equally important as honey bees in pollination and that bees like small flowers, with dandelions being particularly popular. Also, bees will travel up to 3km for pollen and nectar with the pollen being carried back to the hive in pockets in their knees. Joseph showed us the different parts of a real beehive and he explained how honey is produced and how it is removed from a beehive. Of course, we were interested in the stinging of a bee but were told that bees can only sting once, unlike wasps that can sting multiple times. Also, the queen won’t die if she stings but happily, she rarely stings. Brian warned us of the importance of carefully removing the sting after a bee sting as it contains venom. We were quite surprised to learn that bees are free to leave a hive and that the queen stays in the hive unless she decides to swarm off bringing up to 50% of the bees with her. Joseph showed us a picture he took in his garden of a swarm of bees with up to 20,000 bees! Unfortunately, bees don’t live a very long life with bees in summer only living for about 6 weeks as they work so hard while bees can live up to 6 months in winter. We just loved our beekeeping visit and we are very grateful to Orla and Amber for entering us into a Pink Lady Apples competition with this beekeeping visit as a prize!
