Morgan Carr-Markel narrates her team’s experience of bringing honey-bees to the Midtown Farmer’s market in early July –
We had a lot fun leading a stall about honey bee biology at the Midtown Farmers Market on July 7th. Overall, 111 people stopped by and 85 people stayed for at least 5 minutes to learn more about honey bee biology. The star of the show was our glass-walled observation hive – drawing both kids and adults to watch the live honey bees go about their work. This year we had an activity where we asked visitors to look- not just for the queen bee- but also for workers, drones, eggs, larvae, capped pupae, honey, and pollen. This activity provided a great opportunity to talk with visitors about honey bee development, the different castes inside the hive, and bee nutrition. Some kids (and adults) were a little nervous about coming up to the bees, but after seeing their friends touch the glass most people came up and asked us questions.
Photo: Close-up view of a paint-marked queen honey bee laying an egg in our observation hive. She’s surrounded by a retinue of workers.
We also had an area for visitors to learn about beekeeping. Kids could try on a bee veil and touch a smoker and hive tool as well as a frames of wax. Nearby we had a hive box with wooden frames holding large photos of bees, which made a great educational display. Our honey bee trivia poster drew people who came to learn cool facts about honey bees (ex. Honey bees stay warm throughout the winter by clustering, eating honey, and shivering their flight muscles; Last year Minnesota beekeepers produced 7.81 million pounds of honey).
Photo: Claire Milsted and Shiala Morales talking with visitors about honey bee biology, native bee diversity, and how we can help all bees thrive.
It was great to talk with kids that had visited the native bee Market Science tables the week before and remembered learning about bees’ important role in crop pollination. We had an activity with pipe-cleaner “pollinators” and “flowers” made of jars filled with colored sand (pollen). Kids could move the pollinators from flower to flower and watch them move the colored sand from one to the other, thus “pollinating” the flowers. It was fun making the pipe-cleaner pollinators. In addition, we had a box of pinned bees of many different species from Minnesota to show the wide diversity of native bees here. Many people were interested in helping native bees and we gave out lots of flyers about programs such as the Minnesota Bumble Survey and Bumble Bee Watch as well as a list of flowers to plant for honey bees and native bees. Hopefully, together we can make our world a better place for both people and bees!
Photo: Chris Kulhanek using an educational frame to describe how honey bee workers grow and develop. The observation hive and smoker are to the right of Chris and the bee veil and pipe-cleaner “pollinators”/jars of colored sand “flowers” are to her left.
A big thanks to the volunteers who made the day possible: Chris Kulhanek, Isaiah Mack, Claire Milsted, Shiala Morales, Maggie Shanahan