Visit by a Bee Keeper

On Monday 20 September, a bee-keeper named Annie visited Belvue School. With her she bought a special bee-hive so we could look at and learn about honey bees. It turns out that honey bees are amazing. They live in colonies of around 80,000 but only 1,000 are male. Each hive has one queen who can lay up to 2000 eggs each day during the summer. Honey bees are very organised and tidy, and they keep the hive clean and tidy. They like to nest in holes in trees but will use special human-made bee hives. Amazingly, honey bees keep the temperature of the hive at between 35 and 37 degrees all year round, very similar to our body temperature. Honey bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers and turn it into honey. They help plants to grow fruits and make seeds so they are very important for our food supply. We saw worker bees and the bigger queen, and most importantly we tried some fresh honey.