Monday, February 28, 2011

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.

Monday, February 21, 2011

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.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

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!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

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.