9/21/09 – 3rd Grade Show-and-Tell
Alexa’s 3rd grade class was doing a science segment on pollination, and they were using bees-on-a-stick to pollinate the plants. Alexa mentioned that we had bees, and her teacher, Mrs. Lavallee asked if I would come in and talk to the class about beekeeping.
I brought in all of the tools, as well as a couple of drawn frames that the kids could look at, and brought my honey supers in, and made a mock hive for them so see. I put together a presentation that covered the history of bees, and the inner workings of the hive – it had lots of great pictures, but the kids liked the video of the bee installation the best.
The kids were great – they had lots of good questions, and were very interested in beekeeping. The boys cheered loudly when I explained that they got to hang out in the hive while the girls did all the work. Then the girls cheered, and the boys groaned when I explained come fall, the girls were going to kick them out of the hive.
The best question was “How do the bees watch football in the hive?”. In my presentation, I had stated that the drones don’t do much in the hive besides hang out and watch football. So much for humor! I answered that they had “little tiny TVs”.
One of the most interesting answers was to the question “How many people would be willing to be stung to get some honey?” The question stemmed from discussion of the Egyptians and how they were very active beekeepers, as honey was their only sweetener, and they had to destroy hives (and likely get stung a lot) just to harvest the honey.
The answer? About 90 percent of the kids (and both teachers) were willing to take a shot for a batch of honey! I would’ve thought the answer was about 2 of the 50 or so kids in the class!
