In Term 1, the theme in Junior Science was anything and everything about bees.
These tiny insects play a massive role in the ecosystem and almost every food we eat is attributed to the bees. Before learning about them, all we knew was they are tiny yellow and black-striped fuzz balls that buzz around flowers and collect nectar and pollen. We soon realised there were so many things to learn about bees, from how many eyes they have to their hive’s infrastructure. Did you know that honeybees are not native to Australia?
The more we learnt about them, the more we thought “What if we had our own beehive?”. Not many people know but Alia used to have a beehive and we thought, since we’re learning about it, who better to be the beekeepers? We got into contact with Ben from Ben’s Bees and he came in to talk about bees and showed various bee products: beeswax, honeycomb, propolis and more. Each student present for his talk was also given a jar of fresh honey!
Next, came the talk of installing our beehive. We already had the hive and a hive suit so all we needed was the bees. Ben inspected the location of our hive and gave us the greenlight. On the 12th of March, we finally got our beehive! We also enlisted the help of fellow Alians to pick the name of the hive and we collectively agreed that we should call it ‘The White House’.
It has been a few weeks and so far, they have settled in nicely and hopefully we’ll be able to open the hive up and see them in action soon.