Today in the Orchard Garden we were lucky enough to have beekeeper Bill Paley lead a workshop on beekeeping. Bill recently helped to set up a hive of honey bees in the garden, so we gathered around the hives while he showed what the inside of the hive looked like.
Bill explained that the bees build a special cell to make the queen, which is larger than the rest of the cells. If there are two queens in one hive, one will kill the other to ensure that only one queen remains. If the bees run out of space, the existing queen may take half of the hive and leave while the remaining bees stay and raise a new queen. We were able to take a look at the queen and Bill explained that we can tell she’s the queen because she has some green on her.
Bill mentioned that the fun part of bee keeping is trying to figure out what’s going on in the hive and determine what the bees are trying to do. For example, if there are a whole bunch of drone bees all of a sudden that may mean that they don’t have a queen and they are trying to survive. We learned that a lot of what beekeeping involves is observing and just noticing what is happening. This is really a lesson that can be applied in any part of life, especially in the classroom.
Bill also follows the philosophy that while beekeeping you don’t need all sorts of protective gear. Rather, if you go in wearing less clothing, you will be more gentle with the bees and that gentleness can decrease the risk of getting stung. Yet another lesson that can be applied to life: be gentle and mindful rather than using defence mechanisms and force and you’ll be able to live more harmoniously. Who knew there were so many life lessons to be learned from beekeeping?!
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