bees in the Park
One benefit of documentation is that I can go back in my photographic records and look into the emails I sent to families. In the Spring of 2023, my Outside School students and I had another of our “best days ever,” and had a most memorable experience with wild honeybees. Come along with my little school on some bee journeys, presented from my documentation from 2019 - 2023 (most recent is listed first). These also provide insight into my teaching methods.
Materials
Outdoor Site
methods
Patience, Understanding, and an Ability To Keep Cool and Calm Even if Fearful
3/22/23:
As we were leaving yesterday, S noticed the big palm tree at the park’s entrance lawn was listing heavily against the Coast Live Oak. When we saw J and E (two rangers) this morning they said it had fallen over! They estimated that it happened around 4:00 yesterday afternoon. It turns out that it was the other palm tree, the one with the fatter trunk and the bee hive inside that we discovered about three years ago. What an amazing scene!
C (another ranger) says they're having someone come out to try to find the queen; they don't know yet whether she's in the top or the bottom of the tree. So, hopefully the rest can rehome themselves somewhere.
3/23/23:
What a lucky day!*
*When I saw the beekeeper as I drove to the park this morning, I crossed my fingers that we’d get to go watch him work. We did! S (a parent) joined us for the walk down the hill. Lucky us, not only did the beekeeper say that it was okay to watch him, he brought us some honeycomb! H doesn’t didn’t like it, but S, S, and I were like happy little clams. YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG I ❤️ our little school so much!!! 💞💞💞
“Thanks to the bees!”, were S’s words after we got to eat the honey they made. He was so impressed that they’d made it. Even though we all knew how it’s made, it’s something else entirely to get to experience it like this, and the taste of fresh, LOCAL honey. Amazing! The dark honeycomb is from Fall and Winter. The honey is thick and comes from tree sap. As the Spring flower honey comes in, it will be light in color and runny. This taste is home.
After he’d doffed his beekeeper’s outfit and donned his street clothes, the beekeeper came over, gave us more honeycomb, and explained what he was doing:
He looked around inside the palm’s trunk for a place where there was an extra amount of bees, as that was most likely where the queen was. He said that’s safer and faster than teasing her out individually. Then, he put that mass of the honeycomb into the bottom half of the new hive, then put a top half on that which contains new slats. The bees from the bottom half (except the queen) will come up, and the bees that are outside can explore the new hive all day. At the end of the day, the bees will want to cozy up somewhere safe and warm, so hopefully most of the hive will have explored then moved into their new digs. If the queen is there, great! If not, the bees will give royal jelly to a female larva, and she’ll turn into a new queen.
He’s been keeping bees since around 2011, and these bees will be going to Urban Tilth, making food for our community. It turns out he’s their deputy director! We ❤️ Urban Tilth!!!
3/30/23:
Checking out the bee palm. S managed to glean another piece of honeycomb even though it was almost entirely gone, and I was able to get a piece of the wax for my natural history collection.
Planning Ahead
Marking a major difference between children in traditional schools and those at Outside School, one of the students verbalized their thinking after taking in all the above:
-If the bees should be gone by the next day, then,
-They should be able to ask their parent to visit the fallen palm tree the next day when they had piano lessons nearby, then,
-They should be able to access more honeycomb safely.
Every day I upload photos and videos to a secure site for the families. Here’s a selection from the experience above:
1/24/23:
S had helped pile the different sizes of sticks for a few moments while H rescued a bee.
That bee was another cool adventure! H found it laying atop a recycling bin, and got the forceps out of the dissecting kit. After some gentle exploration, he wanted to know if the wind was moving its antenna. No, it was I barely alive! An old student of mine once showed our group how one can squeeze juice from fruit in our lunches, so H placed the bee in the sun, squeezing orange juice drops around it and on its face. It drank! It drank and it drank! It blew away in the wind and we couldn't find it again. But, I'm certain it got plenty of sustenance for flying away once it warmed up in the sunshine. See its proboscis, sipping it up?
6/8/22:
Bee collection teamwork:
9/21/21:
I sat on a rock for a time, and the kids were so excited to hear about all the species of insects and birds I'd seen, in addition to a squirrel that looked like it waved at me, that they abandoned their lunches to check it out. I'd gotten some shots of insects standing on duckweed to sip water, and so did B!
4/29/21
When T jumped from one tree onto another, I noticed bees came out when he thumped on the landing. They went back into their hole and later, when T and M observed for a longer period, they noticed that this species has a black and white pattern on their abdomen instead of black and yellow, and each bee had its own hole. I think these may be a native CA bee, and the holes may not be for a hive, but instead tubes for laying their eggs. But I really don't know for sure!
R has a phobia of bees, so M helped her past the colony.
4/14/21:
T showed everybody the beehive in the palm tree. It's been there at least two years, and the bees come to drink down in the creek!
2/4/21:
I approved of R's desire to bring in his new vacuum bug catcher. D (his mom) reminded him not to catch any bees. Can you guess the first bug they caught?!?!
1/6/21:
The boys were scared of a bee they found on the slide (we did get to the playground this afternoon!), so M picked it up. Its leg moved and she discovered it was alive... Just cold and soaked. She took it into the sunshine where she helped it dry off, then gave it some orange juice from the one orange wedge she had left from her lunch, and it took off! How cool is that?!?!
1/7/21 (Email newsletter to my mailing list about the experience above):
Bee Rescue
The children found a cold, wet bee that they thought was dead. When its leg moved they quickly discovered that it was alive. The sun had come out, so one of them took it for warming, helped blow and brush it dry, and offered it orange juice from her lunchbox. It worked, and the bee flew away. Amazing, right?!?!
7/18/20:
Accountability toward animals:
As I learned in a training session back in my days with the Office of Laboratory Animal Care at UC Berkeley, everyone has their own personal place on a continuum of decision-making about where their own level of comfort is around humans' use of animals; everything along a range between no animal use at all to animals can be used for anything and everything. When M started telling me about an octupus he'd dissected on a beach, we shared stories of animals we'd dissected and our shared fascination with cephalopods. He knew I had a dissecting kit and asked me to carry it along in case we needed it. Sure enough, he found a dead bee and dissected it. The hunt was on for more dead insects, but kids discovered they could easily kill bees underfoot that were sipping nectar from clover. Through this, the kids learned of the different colors of insect guts ("Heather, what's the pink guts? What about the yellow?"), saw how the stingers were attached, saw the proboscis, witnessed pollen pockets on their back legs, and wondered about a white, fuzzy substance on the hairs of one of them (I couldn't tell if it was fungus, mites, or something else). While I did feel uncomfortable I also recognized the value of this experience. At lunch, I led a discussion that started about the meat some of us had in our lunches (some kids did not eat meat, but people in their families did). We talked about how we bought the meat at the store, but that did mean that we caused others to kill animals on our behalf. That led into the kids' own talk about the bees. Some were fine with killing the bees, others believed it was okay to kill some of the bees, but make sure there were plenty left, while still others empathized with how the bees must feel with getting killed and didn't think that should happen. Recognizing that these are individual thoughts, I tried to remain as neutral as possible. I think most of the kids felt validated in their own reasoning and ability to share their ideas, and being able to satisfy curiosity led to less animal death. Later in the week, some of the kids wanted to catch fish and roast them to eat, and later caught bees and fish as pets. I did point out that learning about animals by observing their behavior is as valid as learning about their anatomy. I shared lots of true animal stories, one of them about the hyenas as UC Berkeley. I wonder how those stories will be translated by your kids!
7/11/20:
Bee Rescue
A honeybee became entrapped in a spider's web. It was struggling to get out, and a spider never came to wrap it up and eat it. R decided he should rescue it, and got close with a dry leaf. He took it out so gently that the spider web wasn't ruined at all and the bee was able to make its escape!
7/8/19 (Email to Parents):
Using O's stick to make orange juice from the tired out honey bee that couldn't fly...
Honeybee in recovery...
7/9/19 (Email newsletter to my mailing list about the experience above):
The kids found a honeybee that couldn't fly and one offered up that he knew juice would help it. Not having any juice, they took sticks to drill into an orange one of them had in their backpack, then squeezed the juice. It promptly soaked into the soil so they put some on a leaf, then transferred the bee gently to it. When we checked back later the bee had flown off!
You really can't beat child-driven curriculum!
1/10/20 (Parent review about the experience above):
My son who was 5 at the time of attending the Outside School absolutely loved it! My son told me a few days in that he taught his teacher how to save a bee. I was touched by Heather's mutual respect that she has towards her students to let them switch roles as well and let the children say or teach a thing or two of what they know as well. I love how the learning experience is based more on the interest of the child that is tangible, meaningful, and sensory learning in a natural environment not to mention the social aspect and mixed age.
Resources
Find more resources in the following links:
“Lesson plan” by Heather Taylor. You are welcome to share all materials with credit to her.