Bee Season 2015 - Preview!

Some sad news from the apiary - the two hives we helped to get ready in the fall did not make it through the winter. While we don't know exactly what happened, the reason is probably complex. It's not rare for hives to fail during the winter - several other local beekeepers also lost hives this past winter.

In order to help maintain the apiary two new colonies arrived today. 30,000 new bees! They will be installed in their new home soon. For the moment they are in the container from the supplier. It's a 3lb box of bees with about 15,000 total workers and one queen. The queen is in a small wooden cage inside the larger box. This allows us to place her directly into the hive. The workers will follow her and stick around to do their work. Happy pollinating!!

Honey makes it to the home economics and sustainability classroom!

This week the students in Ms. Williams' class made some delicious looking cornbread. To make it all the tastier they included a little fresh honey from the Lab Bees. Using the schools local honey is a perfect fit for the sustainability focus that Ms. Williams brings to her class. Look for future honey use by the Home Economics and Sustainability students!

Harvest Time

One of the most enjoyable parts of Autumn is sharing the harvest with friends. This week, Ms. Mitzenmacher's 5th grade class enjoyed some time with their kindergarten buddies form Ms. Ellis and Ms. Younis' class. They used some of the Lab Honey to dip apples in! Both classes enjoyed their harvest treats.

Honey Collection!!

The summer was a good one for the Lab Bees. The workers were out there every day collecting nectar and pollen. Back in the hive they worked hard and produced a decent amount of honey. With such nice weather and good flowering times, the bees are well provisioned with honey stores for the coming winter.

But one of the great things about raising bees is that there is some extra honey that we can collect! In order to collect honey, frames - those rectangular structures the bees build their wax comb on - are removed. Any bees are brushed off and the frames are placed in a plastic box for transport.

Our bees are raised in traditional Langstroth hives and therefore equipment exists to help extract the honey.

The first step is to cut the 'caps' off the comb. The bees seal each cell up once the honey is ready. In order to do this easily a knife dipped in hot water was used. This allows the caps to be removed without damaging the cells underneath.

The second step is to place the gooey frames into the 'extractor'.  This hand powered machine spins the frames like a washing machine spins wet clothes. The honey collects in the bottom and can be removed with the yellow gate.

A strainer helps to catch bits of wax.

After the honey is strained, the sticky, golden goodness can be poured into sterile jars.























Once the honey is in jars, the empty frames can be given back to the bees to clean up. The workers will take the remaining honey back for storage leaving relatively clean frames. To do this, we simply leave the frames outside near the hives.

















So now that we have some honey, we need some reason to get it to students! So anybody with great ideas about projects or curriculum with the bees is welcome to email me (dcalleri@ucls.uchicago.edu)! The golden elixir won't last long!

Student Bee Work!!

Ms. Wagner & Ms. Kennedy's 1st Grade classroom has been hard at work exploring the wonderful world of honeybees. They made an excellent model of the structure bees build to live in and store honey, called comb. Their comb had bees of different life stages and included worker bees performing various tasks. Like good scientists they had a key explaining everything! It is wonderful to see the connection between the beehives and students at Lab. Here are some pictures of their model comb.

 An overview of the entire project. 

 They even have queen cells (larger cells hanging off the bottom)!

 The excellent key to the labels.

The queen's mating flight!

 Flowers for workers to forage at.

 The whole set up.

Various stages of larval development!

Blue Bees!

People are always asking if the bees they see belong to the Lab apiary. Now we have a chance to answer that question because this week a group of students took on the task of labeling some of our bees.

Approximately 2,500 bees were removed from one of the hives and chilled in the freezer until they became immobile. The students then quickly gave each bee a small dot of blue paint on the thorax. The bees slowly warmed up and were returned to the apiary.

The paint should last for about two weeks - so keep an eye out for our bees as you pass gardens and flowers in Hyde Park. In order to gather some data on how far from the hive the bees forage it would be great to hear about locations where people see them - we'll take the exactness of GPS or just what building or address the bees are near.

Don't forget to say hello to the blue bees!!!

Thanks to the bee labelers - Francine, Clay, Jason, Whitney, Daniel, Justin, Tom, Cat, Mr. Jones, Alex and Chevonne.

ESH 1st graders visit the apiary!

Today, two classrooms from ESH - Ms. Wagner & Ms. Kennedy and Ms. Rochester & Ms. Cincotta - visited the apiary. Ms. Wagner's class has been making an awesome bee display outside their classroom and Ms. Rochester's class has been studying insects. This makes the apiary and the garden a perfect to visit and make connections to the classroom.

It was a beautiful sunny day with blooming plants and active bees!!





The students gathered around the apiary and talked about how to behave around the bees and  used their observation skills to view the bees and the beehives.








 

The students were even able to see pollen on the back legs of bees returning to the hive.

 We also put some bees in a box so the students could observe them up close.

They students brought with them some great questions about the bees. Here are a couple of them:

We opened the hive and took out a frame of honeycomb covered with bees. The students formed a receiving line and were excited to see so many bees up close!

Then we put the frame back and the students returned to school with visions of happy bees!!

Thanks for the visit!!

And don't forget the famous monarch butterfly! The students saw some of the telltale larvae on milkweed plants!! Bonus!