This weeks reading was very interesting to me because i was able to read and watch videos while learning and gaining a better understanding about how to be safe when you are around bees.
In the first reading about bee safety it went through in point form what some safety tips are and what materials are useful.
Some of the useful safety tips were;
1)Wear as much white as possible: Bees seem to be calmer around beekeepers dressed in white.
2) If possible, do not wear any perfume or anything sweet smeeling that may attrack the bees.
3) Don't wear anyhing that will make you look like a flower.
4)If stung remove stinger as quickly as you can and smoke the area stung. The stinger releases an alarm pheromone and can irritate the other bees in the area.
Some useful materials when you are around bees are;
1) A smoker, this will calm the bees before opening the hive
2) Some after bite which will help if you get stung.
The second article I read was on a working bees life cycle. This article was interesting becasue i did not know anything about a bees lifecycle until i read this article. In this reading i learnt that it takes 21 full days for a bee to grow to a full adult. I also had no idea that bees spun and made cacoons for themselves when they are in the middle of their lifecycle. The third video is teaching us how to put the bee hive together. I learnt that there are diffrent sizes of each hive, it does not neccissarily have to be large blocks like what we have at our school, but it could be smaller ones and they could be stacked higher. There are two types of hives, top bar hives and Langstroth. The top bar hive works well for some because it is low coast and easy to build.
To me the last reading was very interesting! The way bees use their bodies through dance to show which direction the flower is. I found it interesting that they bring back a sample of the pollin so each bee knows what they are looking for. They use the sun as a spot of direction, and their tail as a way of telling how far away the flower is. Bees are able to tell the disstance they have gone by how much honey they have used.
