September 7, 2007--Bees!

We had a great field trip today with the kids--we went to visit the Royer's Honey Farm. We've been studying bees this week in the Cooperation unit in Konos. We've have some long-time friends that have been raising honeybees for many years, and I asked them if they could show our small Konos co-op around. I told him there would be less than twenty people there, because I was just thinking the four families in our Konos group would be coming. Well, a few more families also were interested, and we got persmission to invite them along as well. We had about three dozen people there altogether. It was a really neat fieldtrip. He showed us the queen bee, and the broods cells they were making. You could even see the grubs inside the brood cells! There were bees flying everywhere and no one even got stung. It was pretty amazing watching him lift out the frames with his bare hands! He did wear a veil to keep them from his face, and he had a smoker to calm the bees, but no gloves. He brought out several frames of honeycomb and let the kids carry them to the barn where he works on the honey. He cut out the honeycomb and let the kids try some, and then put it in the extractor and let them spin the honey out. We purchased some of his honeycomb and took it home to eat afterwards, too. It was a lot of fun, and a nice beginning to the school year. The kids learned a lot about bees this week. I had asked one of the kids, "Could you imagine having 60,000 sisters and only 200 brothers?" Jay said, "That's about what we've got right now." I guess he still feels like he's in the minority. I don't know--I think two boys are pretty equal to four girls.