The last few years have been difficult for me in terms of keeping viable hives. Bees die off, disappear, become weak, etc. Beekeeping has been much more of a challenge than it was in years past. Last summer my only hive vanished, after being robust for many months.
It is easy to come discouraged, especially when beekeeping costs a good bit of money, but since I have been covering many bugs as part of the entomology class I wrote for the younger set, I felt I needed to include honeybees.
So when I ordered 3 packages of bees and they arrived, I suited the three young ones up!
The kids painted the hives several weeks ago and helped set them up near the new blueberry patch.
All we needed to do was install the packages.
Of course the kids really enjoyed looking at the queen bees.
They each had the job of holding the queen cage until ready to place her cage inside the hive.
We were successful in getting the packages installed and the bees have been productive and busy ever since. We also started a small notebook for keeping notes on each hive, a smart practice for any beekeeper.
Three days later we suited up again to see how the queen was doing, and we discovered she was released in all three hives.
The kids are keeping the cages as a keepsake.
Let the beekeeping fun begin!
Happy Tuesday Ya'll!
Good post, good to see that you are giving lifetime experience to kids to know more about bees. Thank you for sharing it with us
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