Will work for honey!

Honey!!

Recently one of the hives went through spring cleaning. The different layers of the hive were separated and the comb checked for parasites or damage. There was also the removal of dead bees from the normal winter die off.

One unexpected find was several combs still full of honey!! It seems that the bees didn't eat all of their stores over the harsh winter. The frames were removed and last weekend the honey extracted. The now empty frames were placed near the hives so the bees can clean them up for reuse some time in the future.

So now for the fun part. There are 12 jars of honey that need good homes. But there not going to just anybody!! Classrooms will need to earn them - preferable with something we can share on the The Lab Bees blog.

Write stories about bees.
Do a project about bees.
Make pictures or other art projects about the bees.
Research the history of bees.
Go on a flower search and look for foraging bees.
What else can you do?!?!

We'll collect up the names of the classrooms that participate and put them in a hat to draw the lucky honey recipients! Email me at dcalleri@ucls.uchicago.edu. Good luck!

The Bees Spring Back!

You thought the winter was long?!? Think how the bees must feel. The whole colony has been confined to the hive since the day the temperature went below about 42 F. That was forever ago. So as the weather gets warmer, the bees begin to leave the hive to forage. The problem is that because the honey bees are not native to the Midwest they don't have a co-evolved relationship with the local flowers. This means that the bees are ready when the flowers are not! After long journeys looking for nectar and pollen the bees return in need of an energy boost. So how do you feed a bee anyway?

This picture answers that question. This is a feeder that gets filled with a 1:1 by mass sugar:water mixture. The bees take up the sugar water in the blue disc below the storage container. A nifty little system indeed.

The bees, as you might suspect, have the mouthparts of an animal that sucks up liquid. The image below is a nice, clear illustration of the basic parts.

The tube shaped tongue is labeled 'gls'. This image is from a website called honeybee.drawwing.org. Adam Tofilski's illustrations are well researched and communicate the beautiful structures of the honey bee.