Happy Bee Girl / Sad Bee Girl

It has kind of been a long time since I've written because all my bees died. But guess what! I got new ones on May 21st! When the bees were coming home to my house, the bees were in the backseat with me, on the floor on the other side of the car. There were 10,000 bees in just a small box, like a foot long. Surprisingly, I was not nervous to have the bees in the backseat of the car with me. I felt very happy because the bees got introduced to us while we were in the car because they were with their new family.

I have to mention that the queen was unknown. The bees did not know her. She was in her own small box. My mom sprayed all the bees with water to cool them down. When it was time to put the bees in the hive, I GOT TO PULL THE BOX WITH THE QUEEN IN IT. There were also a couple worker bees in there. We had to take off the metal cap because that's how she gets out of the box when she's ready and she's gotten to know the other bees. We hung the queen's box up between two bars with wire.

Do you know how we got the rest of the bees in the hive? My mom banged the box so all of them fell down then flipped the box right into the hive. Since the queen was already in the hive, the other bees wanted to be with her too. And since all of them did not come out, we just put it vertical (that was a good word) with the hole looking toward the hive. And when they were ready, they could come in.

That was the first happy bee girl day. Well, I had another on Father's Day. My hand was on the edge of the bee hive but not close to the door. A bee just walked on my hand. I came up from the bee hive and showed my mom and dad. My dad was kind of scared because he thought I was going to get stung. Well, I did not and I did not get worried. And I didn't really listen because I thought that was kind of weird. I thought, "Daaaaaaad, stop it. I won't get stung. The bee loves me." It did not want to come off me when I wanted it to go off to its hive. It came back on me. I tried it again and it came off and did not come back on. I was kind of glad because I did not want to keep on trying to put a bee back on its hive.

The next day, I was over by the hive again. A bee chased me and stung me right on my knuckle. The stinger was still in it and I got to see the stomach. The stomach was tiny and white. It felt so bad, I screamed. I was not really fussing with the bees but my hand was pretty close to the door and I did not really mean it. I ran inside and got the secret cure. I'll tell you the secret cure but don't tell anybody else: it is baking soda and your saliva. Just make a paste with it and put it on your bee sting. My mom also gave me a homeopathic remedy (mom's note: Apis). It calmed me down. This is weird--it was so long ago, my finger is fine but I can still see the mark that the stinger left.

The Tulip Festival

At the Tulip Festival I saw little honeybees on the grape hyacinths. My dad took a picture of them. I was very happy about this. It made me think about the bees we were getting the next month. The Tulip Festival was on Mother's Day.

I'm sorry this is short but that's all I can think of now. Do you know why I have not blogged in a long time? It's because I did not know what to say since I did not have bees. Like I said before in an old blog, my bees died and I had to wait to get new ones.

Happy Earth Day

Earth day is very important because the Earth is your home. Do you want it to be a mess? Here are some ideas that might inspire you: 
1. keep bees because bees are dying and are very important to pollinate the flowers for the food we eat.
2. pick up garbage anywhere because litter will pollute the Earth and is ugly.
3. walk or ride a bike to your school or grocery store. Why not get saddle bags?
4. compost scraps of fruits, vegetables and eggshells in a bucket and toss it in pile to make nice healthy soil (but it does stink). It doesn’t make sense to throw food in a landfill.
5. unplug your cell phone and computer chargers when not in use.
6. use the sleep mode on your computer and phones when not in use.   

Earth Day should be every day!

Bad Day

Yesterday, my family opened the hive. We checked to see if the bees were alive. There were none alive. We had to clean out the hive and we got a lot of honey. We buried the bees on the edge of my ravine behind my house.

I felt very very sad when I saw all of those dead bees. Some of the bees on the top were actually moldy. I think the cold weather and the moisture in March killed them. We saw a lot of eggs from the Queen. We tried to look for her, but we couldn't find her.

We cleared out the hive by taking out all the honeycomb and dead bees. We left some of the honeycomb in big bowls in the yard. The good news is I saw a ton of honeybees today on the honeycomb. I had to watch where I stepped because there were so many--I might have gotten stung if I had stepped on one. The bees will take that honey back to their hives. It will go to good use. They might be wild bees. We're hoping that some bees will move in during swarming season in late May. This is how they swarm: they split up the hive and they move. The queen takes one half and guides them.

We learned a lot by losing those poor bees.

How are the bees doing in the hive?

I can't wait to see the bees. When I go over to their hive and ask them a question, they sometimes answer. I ask them "How are you doing today?" Usually they say, "I'm so lazy." But I do not believe them! They only seem lazy to themselves because they are used to being so busy.

I am not nervous about them making it through the winter. I can hear them vibrating just a teensy weensy minuscule bit. Every time we have a spring-like day, they don't come out. They might just know that the next day will be a total disaster!

What temperature do bees come out of their hive?

Well, I know.

Our kind of bees come out in the high 40's - mid 50's. We have had some really warm Spring-like days, but we haven't seen any bees yet--not even one. So where are they and when are they going to come out? They must know that it's going to become co-o-o-lder again the next day so they say, "it isn't safe to go out." I bet the first one who knows it says that to the other bees in the hive. I am so eager to see them again!

Flowers that stink

I just visited a list of flowers that have a disgusting odor.  http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm#carrion

Flies pollinate these kinds of flowers. Orchids, yellow skunk cabbage and a whole lot of other ones that stink too. It isn't really important to plant these kinds of flowers in our gardens because we do not want to smell that stinky odor. And these flowers do not come from plants that make food for us. These flowers smell like rotting flesh and one even smells like dog poop! Most of the flowers we think of smell nice so I found it a little funny that there are flowers that smell gross. This is how I found out about these kinds of flowers: a bee movie I watched in the theater. It was called The Queen of the Sun.  http://www.queenofthesun.com/

When I heard that flies pollinate I thought, "What the heck?" so I wanted to know more about it.

What kind of animals pollinate?

I know a ton! This is a great list of them: all sorts of bees, not just honey bees & bumble bees. Flies pollinate flowers that smell like decaying flesh to us. Beetles pollinate flowers too. Lemurs and lizards also do. Moths, ants, bats, butterflies, wasps and birds do too. It isn't just honey bees that we need to watch out for, it's all of the animals I just said. So this is why we plant gardens. Make sure to have a really colorful garden and lots of flowers. Water with rocks in it is important so the animals can have a little drink. You need rocks because if you didn't, all the insects would drown when they tried to drink. They would fall in. So they stand on the rocks and drink off of them.

So easy to take care of

Not like a dog, bees are easy to take care of. My hive is a top bar hive. It's an easy hive to take care of. Bars go across the top and the bees make their honeycomb hanging down from them. In the fall, we check for moths and mice that can get in the door and make a nest and kill down the hives. We put a screen in front of the door that only bees can get through--not moths, not mice.

Dog are not that simple. We have to walk them. We have to feed them. We have to watch them. They just can't run off, but our dog does. After 2 hours, he comes back. We don't have to watch the bees when they fly off. They feed themselves. They clean themselves and their home.

Bees are just so easy to take care of.

How do bees not sting you?

I know the answer. When we open our hive, we don't need a hat, a veil or any suit. We look and don't steal a lot of honey. We use a smoker but don't smoke it that much. But most important, we are nice to the bees when we open the hive.

Always be sure to rub lemon balm on your skin--they love that smell. When you make the hives, you rub lemon balm on the inside before you put bees in them.

If they fly over to you and land on you when you are playing, just sit still and wait until they fly off. Once in kindergarten, my friend, Rowan had a bee on her and she went crazy. Ms. A got it off and stepped on the bee. I was horrified!

About Bees

Why are bees dying? I know the answer. It's because people are spraying their plants with sprays that are only supposed to kill bugs that are hurting the plants, but it also kills the bees. I don't like it. This is how we can stop that. We need to learn how to stop bad bugs without killing good bugs, like bees, butterflies and ladybugs. You can use some spray, like deer spray, that doesn't kill bugs but keeps the deer from eating your plants.