Outdoor field trips on beautiful days are the best, wouldn't you agree?
The hive tour was set up so cleverly. One beehive stood on a table in a grassy area, underneath a tent with mesh walls. All the families stood just outside the tent peering in, and the beekeeper stood inside the tent with the hive. He lectured us on the finer points of bees, then took the hive apart frame by frame, found all the interesting things on that frame (pollen! cells with honey! empty cells! the queen!), and walked it around the inside perimeter of the tent so that everyone could see:
He took care to make sure that every single child saw every single fascinating thing:
Inside, we took another tour of the processing area. Mmmm, raw, unwashed honey!
The girls felt pretty fine, indeed, to already be expert crafters of rolled beeswax candles:
But I do believe that the most THRILLING thing for each of them was when they each got to fill their very own honey bear:
Each girl has a honey bear of her own!
Each honey bear is quite sticky by now, as you can imagine.
Let's see...I took home:
- one jar of raw honey (full of protein, and good for your immune system!)
- one half-gallon jug of wildflower honey, because the girls sure as heck aren't going to let me share their honey bears
- one one-pound chunk of beeswax, soon to coat the outsides of autumn leaves, in just the first of its MANY uses around here
- one small section of honeycomb, just this afternoon dissected and then devoured by the children
That may have possibly been this week's grocery budget, but hey--everyone loves honey on toast, no matter how many meals they eat it in a row!
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