Bee Presentation

My wife volunteers at my 2nd grader's school, mostly in the library, and talks to Jacob's teacher quite often. The teacher mentioned last week that they had just gotten done learning about bees, and "Jacob seems to be very knowledgeable about bees." Then my wife told her it was because his dad is a beekeeper. Tracy then proceeded to "volunteer" me to give a presentation on bees that Friday (the 30^th of April) since she knew I was taking a vacation day.

So, I spent the week gathering my thoughts and some pictures of bees to present to a class of 2^nd graders. I heard that the Bee Club has a traveling mini-hive that shows people the different parts (since a full-size hive is difficult to carry around), so I arranged to borrow that. I wondered how I could bring in some live bees, but I don't have an observation hive and didn't want to just bring in a jar of bees, for fear someone would let them loose (it would probably be my son to do that...)

So, I gave my presentation to the 2^nd grade class. I showed a bunch of pictures of bees, hives, how they live, the different types of bees (workers, drones, and queen), and even showed a piece of the PBS Nature show on honey bees. It took about 1/2 hour, and based on the hands going up and questions asked, it was a success. There were about 25 children, and the principal herself stopped in for part of my presentation.

One of the goals of my Bee Club is to promote bee education; I was pleased to be a part of this. Maybe there is a future beekeeper among them! Here are some pictures from the event. My wife took lots of pictures, but I didn't feel right about posting pictures of other peoples' children. So I am posting only those of me and my son, and backs of heads. Take my word for it - there was lots of audience participation!

My son the helper!