Week 1-2 (Sept 5th-17th)

1. I find it very interesting that blowing on the bees or even breathing on them can aggravate them because of the carbon dioxide coming out of your mouth. I think the fact that the man in this video doesn't even wear any gloves when he is in the bees area and working with them is incredible and shows how comfortable he must feel working with and around the bees. Also, the way that you can and should smoke them seems like it is precise. You want to make sure you don't burn the bees but as well as that, you need to stay protected so just the right amount of smoke calms the bees down.

Next time I am in the garden, i actually would just want to make sure that I am observing the bees more carefully because as he said, there are so many little things that they do to show aggression or certain moods and I would like to be able to notice when those things start to happen.

My question is what is it in a bees mind that makes it think that there is a forest fire coming when you smoke them. You would think it might smell differently, the smoke from a fire and from a can but

 I could be wrong.

2. I was looking through the life of a bee and notices how quickly they are born(within three days) but then I noticed the life span of  a bee isn't even that long so it shows how much work they put into their hive. Also it's weird that the male bees (drones) literally do absolutely nothing. Their main goal in life is to mate with the queen bee which has a very very slim chance of happening. I find it interesting that the queen bee lays her larva down but it is the workers that take care of everything. The queen is mainly their to create new life.

I want to find the star like shape where all the bees are surrounding just the queen bee, I think that would be an awesome thing to find.

My question would probably be what is the longest a bee has ever lived for? Has there been any that have lasted months? If so, why?

3. It's so interesting how humans can now make hives that bees live in. I mean even though they don't look the same structurally on the outside, the inside bit still has all the essentials a bee needs to survive so they treat it like their home, which it is. Like the man said in the video, you usually have two medium deeps but since you are the one creating the hive, you can add or remove different things to see if it helps at all. Its amazing how the bees don't even seem to notice anything different with the hive even though it is man made.

I want to see how many medium deeps we have in our hive at school because I don't think I actually checked last time.

My question is since these hives are man made, what is the difference between one that is man made and one that isn't. Do they both have the exact same parts? Does one hold more honey and larvae than the other?

4.It's weird to think of people creating hives and making them more intricate than the normal hive, they started out so simple and are now actually being made with a lot more detail. You can see in the video how careful this man is being about taking the bees and the honey out of the hive, as to not disrupt their working in any way. When you see the bees on the comb of honey, you can tell that they are all working, none of them are ever not moving, which shows how intricate the hive must be, if they don't rest that often.

Next time I go to the hive, I want to see if I can find any warped combs and look more precisely at what the bees are doing if they are never standing still.

My question is do the bees notice when they are being picked up out of their hive? If so, do they just ignore it so they can keep working or do they not even feel it?

5. It's crazy how far bees will travel just to get that honey and how important it is for them. Also I find it amazing how there are different bees for different jobs, like the ones that just go to find the flowers and come back so that the others can actually extract what they want from it. To see what it looks like in a bees eye and how blurred everything almost looks is crazy. Their vision is so different that ours.

I would love to see a bee actually dance, I think that would be awesome and to see how the other bees react would be am amazing experience.

If bees could see with the clarity that humans can see with, would they be better at their assigned jobs for the hive? Or would it not make a difference?