Uncle Jer's Bee Show

Learning about Bees and Bee Keeping with Uncle Jer

Our local library has generated summer programs for the children in our area. The first, which recently ended was a story time once a week on Thurs.

The second, which has proven to be much more interactive also engages the minds of the adults who choose to attend as well.

Yesterday’s program was Uncle Jer’s Bee Show.

I must admit I was more excited than Mr. A because I love bees. They are so beneficial.

The program was entertaining and informational although it did start off on the wrong foot. I walked in excitedly (those of you who know me can picture this). I started asking questions and somewhere in my nonstop verbiage I uttered the words “medicated”. Now mind you my knowledge of bees is very limited so I was only repeating something I had read or heard, but Uncle Jer jumped on that word expostulating “I beg your pardon“,  BUT….

Needless to say my bubble was popped and I shrank away to my seat wishing I could just go home. I stayed though and found his wife to be quite charming and the program to “bee” enjoyable and filled with fun facts.

The program began with a colourful Powerpoint presentation created and  narrated by Ms. Jer. Throughout the presentation I was rewarded with little nuggets of information to tuck away in my brain cells.

For example:
* Honey in Nepal is collected much like it has been in the past by the past. Read more by clicking here:  THE HONEY HUNT OF THE TIGER-MEN

* Bees have jobs, ie Queen, Queen’s attendants, housekeepers, nursemaids, gatherers, drones, bees to fan the hive to cool it down. (they can keep the temperature in the hive several degrees lower than the temperature outside.

* When a queen is need a “special larger cells is built and the grub that grows within it is fed royale jelly.

* Their jobs dictate their life span; Queens live 3 – 7 years, workers 40 days, drones 2 weeks.

* Drones have no stinger, must be cared for and do absolutely nothing but live and one procreate.

* Bees do a dance to tell the other bees when they have found a cache of nectar flowers

* Bees are responsible for 80% of the pollination of our food plants.

* A bee must visit 2,000,000 flowers to produce 1 pound of honey.

* A bee travels about 55,000 miles to gather enough nectar to produce 1 pound of honey.

* This is equal to about 11 round trips from New York to San Francisco!

* 3 pounds of bees equals about 15,00 bees.

* There are over 300 flavors of honey in the US.

* If you have allergies eat honey made from the pollen of the plant you are allergic to.

* If you encounter bees, “bee” calm! Bees can detect fear and will “become” agitated.

* Beeswax is excreted through glands in the abdomen.

*Nursery bees feed the grubs “bee bread”.

* Bees are more likely to sting in the fall as they are a little grumpier due to the lack of pollen.

* If stung seek help immediately. Call the fire department if necessary because the first half hour is the most important. Just because you have been stung before does not exempt you for anaphylactic shock. Uncle Jer’s sister had been stung before and yet at 53 she was stung and did require an epi pen>

* Uncle Jer suggests removing the stinger and applying mud, me I use baking soda.
Uncle and Ms Jer entertained the children with bee puppets. I found Uncle Jer to be a little loud, he made me jump a couple of times, but maybe I am being critical because of our earlier interfacing.

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Many different tools are used in beekeeping:
* Bee boxes to keep the honey combs in

* Netted hat protection from bee stings

* Smoker with bellows, used to calm the bees before removing the honeycombs.

* Hive knife, heated it is used to remove the wax caps from the honeycomb before the honey is extracted.

* Extractor to remove to honey from the combs (which are then returned to the bees so they can refill them with honey.
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After the program was over the children could go up to ask questions.
Mr. A definitely seemed to find the worth his time and went up afterwards to have his questions answered.
Each child received a honey stick and an activity booklet.

Uncle Jer and his wife have an informational web site establish. Here is a link that will provide some educational and craft links about bees. After going to this link scroll down the page. The selection of links are on the left side.
Uncle Jers crafts and info

and remember "Bee Good"  :)

Yippee! It's a Yellow Day!

Today was definitely a Yellow Day, full of joy and happiness!

I found a Damsel fly while gathering grass for the geese this morning and got a quick pic.
It was picture day at school, so I drove over and took my turn at a camera shot. As I was leaving Alicia was just puling in with the boys. She had Josh and Jordan as well.

From there I drove to Rocklin to pick up an order from Mercurius. I was quite excited about this one. I just discovered they carry left handed scissors and I ordered 2 different pair for Owen. I also got a beginners handwriting practice book for him, a poetry and a music composition book for BJ.

It seems like every time I go through the catalog I find something new. Then when I place an order for a customer I just add that to the order.

This evening I prepared for BJs lesson tomorrow. There is so much to choose from and so little time! It is not fair!

Fall is gently kissing the air so that we are feeling a little temperature drop. What a difference a week makes!

Yes, this has been a FantasticYellow Day!

Kathleen

Reptile Show

Sunday brought the Reptile Show to the Convention Center in downtown Sacramento. We went to it as a field trip to learn more about reptiles.
I will admit it was not what I had expected. I thought it would be more like a traveling zoo for reptiles. It was not. It was more of a gathering of reptile vendors, but I will say, most of them, almost all, were excellant sources of information about each species they were vending. They were happy to let you touch and willingly answered any questions that we had.

In some ways it was better than a zoo. When it is a traveling show you might have 1 or 2 persons who might answer questions. Here we had over a hundred of very enthusiastic and motivated sources of information.

I found out that geckos, like alligators, can have their sex predetermined before they hatch. Just control the temperature. Higher and you get a male lower a female. It was all a lot more complicated than that but I do not want to write a dissertation so we will leave it at that.

I even was able to have a Tarantula on my hand, touch a snake, a lizard and some kind of very large insect that I have already forgotten the name of! I just remember the 13 year old boy who was telling me about it was one of the most articulate young persons I have come across in quite a while. He told me that the insect, started with a V I think, had a very fragile exoskeleton and would probably fracture if I dropped it. Since it was a $65.00 bug I did not move until the insect was back in the young mans hands.

I took a lot of pictures because everything was so beautiful and interesting. Here are some of my favorites:

Have an Outrageously Orange Day!
Kathleen

Does all soil have the Same Ingredients?

Purple Environmental Sunday

Wow! Only three more days until Earth Day, Weds, April 22. With Spring being here and Earth Day near I thought a soil project would be a good thing to do.

Does all soil have the same ingredient mixture?

What you will need:

1. a quart jar with a lid
2. earth from different places, including a purchased potting soil mix.
3. crayons of various colours
4. water

Before you begin your experiments, write in your journal what you think will happen during the experiment.

What to do:

1. Fill the jar about 2/3 full of water.
2. Add soil from one sample until the jar is almost full. (use the potting soil in the last experiment)
   
3. Screw on the top.
4. Shake the container well.
5. Put the container on a flat counter.
6. Wait one hour.
   
7. Sand goes to the bottom first.
8. Silt settles down next.
9. Clay particles are smaller and lighter, so they settle down last.
10. You can see the layers in your jar.
11. Draw a picture of this using your coloured crayons.
12. Label the picture.
    

1. Empty the jar outside.
2. Wash it out.
3. Now use the soil from your second sample.
4. You might have collected this soil from a different part of town, perhaps when you were visiting a friend or a relative.
5. If the friend or relative has a lovely garden that they would let you take soil from all the better for this test.
6. Remember to ask permission first though.
7. Repeat the test you did earlier.
8. Draw another picture, this time of the results of the test you just did.
9. Label it.

Then prepare for the last experiment.

1. Empty the jar outside.
2. Wash it out.
3. Then repeat the experiment again with the last soil sample. (this is the experiment you will do with the potting soil)
4. What happens?
5. Draw a picture of the results.
6. Label the picture.

After the 3 experiments are completed enter into your journal what you think about the results of the 3 experiments.
What happened that you did not think would happen?
What was the most noticeable difference in the 3 tests?
There are 3 basic soil ingredients: clay, silt and sand. Were you able to see all three in each of your experiments?
What role do you think each plays in growing plants?
Follow up tho the Snail project:
Here are some snail projects you can do while you are caring for and observing your snails.

• Keep a journal of what your snails eat.
• Are there things they won't eat?
• Try carrots, potatoes or a tiny piece of meat?
• Are there things they seem to like more than other things?
• Where do they like to sleep?
• When are they active?
• When are they inactive?
• How long does it take them to eat something that you have place in their bio-home?
• Why do you think farmers dislike snails and slugs?
• Collect some empty snail shells from the garden.
  
• Can you find any with the same markings? Snail shells are like fingerprints, no two are exactly alike.
• Put all the shells in a row according to the number of whorls. Can you find what looks like a very old snail? The oldest snails have about five whorls.
  

If you introduce a slug into the bio-home compare the differences between the snails and the slug.

• Do they eat different things?
• Are there things they both like?
• Are they active at the same time?
  

I have been watching Sienna and Ebony all week. Ebony definitely has a tangerine peel tooth!
I have placed apples, tangerine peels and egg shells on the dirt and I find him on the tangerine peels every night. I thought it might be cool to introduce a slug and some worms into the bio environment to compare what each one eats and how differently they each live.
While the snails sleep during the day and are active at night, the slug seems to be active anytime he is in shade. He also seems a lot less picky about what he eats.
I would have thought there would not be so much difference between them besides the having and not having a shell.

Kathleen

Mar. 5, Lesson

Today we started our day with a nature walk. It is interesting looking at nature through a boys eyes. We were suppose to focus in on animal prints so what was his first focal point? His grandfather's shoe print, hmmmm, was their something to that? Well, we did actually find some prints.
Besides the Goose, Chicken and dog prints, we found quite a few Quail prints. After we found them we discussed the difference between the 3 kinds of bird prints; size in length and width, depth. The geese are heavier so their prints are deeper, also their claws are much more noticeable.
After looking at prints for a while we directed our attention to some field grass growing close to the fence line. There were Lady bugs, (Coccinellidae) crawling everywhere. Brennan took the pictures on his camera and I forgot to get copies of his pictures. So I went online and captured a couple to add to this blog. This ladybug pic was not from a nature site. Our ladybug only had four black spots not 7 like this one.
There was one lone White Cabbage Butterfly,(Peiris rapae), picture is from http://crawford.tardigrade.net/bugs/BugofMonth01.html
I want to take advantage of Brennan's interest in birds at this juncture in his life and will let him chose one bird a week to do research onI found a link at The Nature Study Bog for a Bird Colouring Book.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/schoolyard/T_Resouces/ColoringBook.pdf

It will take 6mos to go through all their pictures and by then I will have found some more.

His first choice was the Red Wing Blackbird.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-winged_Blackbird.html

I am not sure if it was because I kept stopping and asking him to listen to the different "voices" of the birds so that he could discern that one or because I told him it was his Uncle's favourite bird.

Besides going to the Cornell sight to look up the Red Wing Blackbird we also click on the song link so that we could here it's song alone. I want Brennan to be able to identify birds by sight, sound, flight patterns and silhouettes. All these information is readily available at the Cornell site.
Every time I find really interesting sites I have been adding them to a Word Doc that I started a while back.
It was getting so long I started organizing it by subject. I have been thinking of making it into a pdf or excel file and adding a link to it on this blog. Don't know if anyone would be interested or not though.
We finished Chapter 3 in the Astronomy book and have only one chapter left. Brennan took the final test and afterward we took a virtual tour of the galaxy and the universe. I found the web sites through the Usbourne Internet linked Science Encyclopedia I just got.
I wish I would have bought it sooner. If you are limited on how many books you can buy, put this one at the top of the Science list. It can be used throughout the school years, covers all facts of Science, has great photos, information and resources. Brand new it costs $40.00 but I found it for a lot less including the shipping on ebay. I always check ebay.com, half.com, and Amazon.com when looking for a specific book. I have found some great buys. Thrifts shops have also been a good resource as well.
I think I have taken to long on each chapter. Although it has been a lot of fun. I also wanted to make it special for him.
This is the Carina Nebula as photographed by the Hubble telescope. This picture came from the Hubble Site, a fantastic source of space photos:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/16/image/a/