Outreach: Youth Education

As part of the blog project, I've been trying to raise awareness about bees by using some of the information I have gained to educate. Last week, I taught a 6th grade class at a local middle school in Madison, WI called Spring Harbor Middle School about bees. Spring Harbor is a public school, but it is unique in that it accepts students from all of Dane County. As a result, the student body is composed of youth with a diverse range of multi-cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, classes are small and give special attention to environmentally related issues. 

During my class, I gave a simple lecture about bees, pollination, and the negative consequences of our current agricultural systems. Reflecting on the session, the students were very engaged and seemed excited to learn about the material. If I were to do this again, I would love to take a class out to an actual hive to show them how an actual colony operates. While teaching in a class from is an important first step, fieldwork is an even more powerful way to get kids involved with sustainability. 

Adding environmental education programs to our public schools is one of the greatest things we can do to strengthen our current education system. Sustainability is a topic that can be applied to every type of work force and discussed by any type of person. Being conscious of environmental issues is important regardless of differences in cultural, economic, and political backgrounds and I think making children aware of this is extremely important. In addition, exposing children to environmental education encourages community activism. Making strong environmental education programs is not only essential for developing skills in youth, but also for promoting community engagement. Many schools want to have stronger education programs, but the lack funding to do so. That being said, many schools welcome volunteers to teach students about environmental topics. If you are interested, ask your local schools if there is anyway to get involved.

6th grade class at Spring Harbor Middle School

Bee Activist of the Day: Heather Swan

One of the goals that I have for this blog is to honor the people who dedicate themselves to bees. As I’ve mentioned before, beekeepers are fascinating people, but there are a lots of other types of people out there ranging from political activists to artists with a profound love for bees. The first person I’d like to feature is Heather Swan, my TA and inspiration for learning about bees.

As an artist, poet, gardener, baker, and teacher, bees have always played an extremely important role in Heather’s life. Heather’s love for bees began as a child when she saw her first honey harvest with her dad. Since then, bees have been an inspiration to some of the things she loves most. While Heather has kept bees before, her main focus right now is to raise consciousness about the importance of bees.  She does so through teaching, giving lectures, writing poetry, and managing community hives. I first saw Heather’s work when she took me out the UW student run hive at F.H King. Check out the photos below to see the hive:

Heather at the F.H. King Hive

Opening up the hive

Holding up a section of the hive where the bees make honey comb

Bees have an acute memory, Heather often sings and talks to the bees so that they become familiar with her and are calm when she works on the hive.

And of course, here is one of Heather's poems about bees:

The Edge of Damage

Poetry by Heather Swan

Parallel Press 2009

University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Cows, Rain, Bees

Once again, rain

eliminates boundaries.

Where once there was sidewalk

edged with street,

now there is only water.

In the same way, pain

can seem larger than the body,

passing through the boundaries,

emanating outward

until everything aches:

the trees, the grass,

the solitary cow

lagging behind the homeward herd,

glancing back and back

to the valley of bees.

Bees, who labor

toward a sweetness

which is taken from them

again and again,

but keep returning

from the fields of clover.

The Worker Bee

With all this talk about worker bees, I thought it might be helpful to include a diagram of what a worker bee actually looks like. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the worker bees are the ones in charge of foraging for nectar and pollen, caring for larvae, seeking out new hive environments, and general maintenance of the hive. This diagram represents a worker bee. While most of the labeled parts are pretty self-explanatory, I've highlighted a few important ones:

• Antennae: Bees have a strong sense of smell to help them seek out food sources. They use the antennae to sense these sources. In addition to dancing, bees also communicate through pheromones. The queen, workers, and drones all use pheromones to communicate with each other. Some of the pheromone functions include attracting swarms, differentiating between larvae and pupae, creating alarm, and searching for nectar.
• Proboscis: This is the tube like tongue that allows worker bees to get nectar.
• Pollen Basket: These are on the worker bees back legs. When flying from flower to flower, the worker bee collects pollen to bring back to the hive. If you look closely at the photo below, you can see the orange pollen on the worker bees that are flying back into the hive.

Check out Honey Bee Suite!

Was delighted to come across another bee blog created by beekeeper from Washington. The guy is a great writer and gives a lot of good information about honey bees, beekeeping, and pollination. The site also provides links to lots of other bee keeping blogs. I recommend checking it out!

Honey Bee Suite

It's cold season...

Yuck! Hate to say it, but it’s about that time for us to face the season of sore throats, stuffy noses, and chest colds. Winter is that season when we are constantly forced to battle off those mild, but troublesome sicknesses that can really take a toll on our daily routines. While the common cold may not be the most disasterous problem to deal with, it can interfere with our lives. The question, however, is what do we do about it? Sure, you can try to self medicate with a bunch of over the counter products from pharmacies, but thanks to bees, there is a much cheaper, effective, and healthier solution and it’s called Propolis. Propolis is a somewhat mysterious product produced by bees used by colonies to manage the structure of the hive. Bees use it to seal holes, protect against bacteria, and mummify intruders (yep, this happens quite frequently!), and we can use it to strengthen our immune systems. Propolis seems to be one of those cure all natural remedies that can be used to fight off anything ranging from sore throats to warts to canker sores. All you need to do is put it on the site of infection, or swallow a couple drops when you feel a cold coming on. Users of Propolis swear by it and I recommend trying it!

Check out Honey Garden's, a bee keeping organization in Vermont, that sells Propolis. Even if you aren't interested in buying the stuff, check out the website for more interesting facts about bees!