Busy Bees!

Yesterday was our trip to the Botanical Gardens to learn all about honeybees, and earn the clover award! The girls met in Room 3 to have a delicious pizza snack, so that they wouldn't be hungry on the trip! What a great way to start a meeting! YUM!

We drove to the Botanical Gardens and met Miss Kerri. Miss Kerri took us to see some honeybees. On the way there, we smelled a horrible smell! Miss Kerri covered up the sign so we couldn't see the name of the plant that the smell was coming from...and then she uncovered it! ICK!!

  

Now that we understood why there was a terrible smell, we were off to see the bees!

Oh wait! Along the way we saw some sheep! Of course we had to pose...I mean, there was just the right amount of sheep! Our Daisies are just too cute!!

 

 Now for the bees! We learned that the biggest bee is the queen bee. She lays a LOT of eggs every day. The drones are the boys...they don't do anything other than mate with the queen. The worker bees are the ones that do everything...they're the girls. So the bees that we see pollinating flowers and making honey are girls. (The girls loved that!) We looked and looked to try to find the queen. She is easier to spot, because she has a big abdomen.

 

I was really proud of the way that the girls took turns to ask questions, and had such thoughtful ideas!

 This is where the bees fly in and out of their hive from the outside of the building:

Along the way to see the outside bee hives, we found the perfect fall photo spot...

Here are the outside beehives. Of course, they aren't very active this time of year. Bees like to fly when it's 50 degrees or warmer.

Back inside the classroom, we learned about the parts of the bee. Did you know that a bee has 5 eyes? I didn't!

We made thumbprint bees, too!

 

Next, for honey tasting! I loved watching the girls' facial expressions while they tasted honey. We tried four different kinds, if we wanted to. We learned that the honey tastes different, depending on the type of flowers that the bees went to. Everyone had a different opinion about what was good and what was yucky...but everyone agreed that the last honey we tasted, the buckwheat honey, was awful!

 

The last thing that the girls did was to plant basil seeds. The basil will grow, and can be used for cooking. The plant will produce flowers for bees, too! That's a win-win for us! We want to help honeybees have plants to pollinate!

 

 

It was a great trip! The girls had a very long day, but they behaved so very beautifully! I know that they were probably very tired when they got home!