Our class visited the Greenacres Foundation in Montgomery, OH September 11th. When I looked Greenacres it seemed similar to a place I used to go when I was younger called Indian Village located in Columbus, OH. I was excited as there aren’t many places in a major city that you can go out and visit a nature area.
When we first got to Greenacres, we congregated into an old church and watched a video on how bees communicate through a “Waggle Dance” I was completely blown away that bees communicate using a dance’s angles and distance of waggling to tell hundreds of other bees exactly where a viable food source is. The video stated that based on the degree of the bees dance in reference to straight up correlated with the direction of the food source based on the sun’s position to the hive. Also, how long a bee waggled during the dance determined how far the food source was from the hive. Scientists found that for every second of waggling, 1 km was added to the distance of the food source from the hive. I never thought that bees were capable of such level of detail in their communication and I was intrigued what else I would learn the rest of the trip.
Next we went outside to do some bee watching. Our guide told us that the prime weather for bees to be foraging is 70⁰F and sunny. Unfortunately, is was 63⁰F and overcast so we didn’t have high hopes of seeing many bees. We did a flower watching experiment where we sat still for five minutes and waited for bees to come pollinate our flowers. Luckily bees did come out! I got some good pictures as you can see above and we got to learn the difference between honeybees and the native bees in the forest. Honeybees are known to only pollinate one kind of flower while they are on a foraging trip while native bees fly to different flowers, grabbing a variety of flower’s pollen.
Lastly, we got to actual beehives and how beekeepers take the honey from the hive and make the honey we eat today. Greenacres had three hives right next to each other differing in size based on the number of bees in the hive. The guide showed us how beekeepers remove the layer of wax over the honey and how they strain out all of the dirt from the honey.
Overall the trip was very eye opening to how different kinds of bees behave in the wild. Some questions I have include:
How do bees behave with other hives when they are so close like at Greenacres?
Why do honeybees only go to the same type of flowers instead of switching it up?
When we first got to Greenacres, we congregated into an old church and watched a video on how bees communicate through a “Waggle Dance” I was completely blown away that bees communicate using a dance’s angles and distance of waggling to tell hundreds of other bees exactly where a viable food source is. The video stated that based on the degree of the bees dance in reference to straight up correlated with the direction of the food source based on the sun’s position to the hive. Also, how long a bee waggled during the dance determined how far the food source was from the hive. Scientists found that for every second of waggling, 1 km was added to the distance of the food source from the hive. I never thought that bees were capable of such level of detail in their communication and I was intrigued what else I would learn the rest of the trip.
Next we went outside to do some bee watching. Our guide told us that the prime weather for bees to be foraging is 70⁰F and sunny. Unfortunately, is was 63⁰F and overcast so we didn’t have high hopes of seeing many bees. We did a flower watching experiment where we sat still for five minutes and waited for bees to come pollinate our flowers. Luckily bees did come out! I got some good pictures as you can see above and we got to learn the difference between honeybees and the native bees in the forest. Honeybees are known to only pollinate one kind of flower while they are on a foraging trip while native bees fly to different flowers, grabbing a variety of flower’s pollen.
Lastly, we got to actual beehives and how beekeepers take the honey from the hive and make the honey we eat today. Greenacres had three hives right next to each other differing in size based on the number of bees in the hive. The guide showed us how beekeepers remove the layer of wax over the honey and how they strain out all of the dirt from the honey.
Overall the trip was very eye opening to how different kinds of bees behave in the wild. Some questions I have include:
How do bees behave with other hives when they are so close like at Greenacres?
Why do honeybees only go to the same type of flowers instead of switching it up?