Over the summer, and into the future, my goal is to educate people more about bees and beekeeping. This venture has been a passion of mine ever since I started beekeeping 4 years ago and I hope to continue it! The biggest way I have done education and outreach this year by hosting field trips. These group or family trips allow people have a hands on experience with beekeeping and lets them look inside the hives! This spring/summer I have been about to host several homeschool groups and families, and have done a presentation at a local school as well.
The kids that came really seemed to enjoy the experience of getting to look inside a beehive and learn more about bees. Most of the kids were pretty young, so the attention span was a bit of a challenge for the presentations I hoped to give, but I tried to adjust to the group that was there and interact as much as possible during my talk. During my presentation I cover topics like, how honey is made, what types of bees are in a hive, and what are some of the tools that beekeepers use. After the presentation was over I would let the kids put on beekeeping gear and showed them what the inside of the hive looks like. Once we got into the bees but the kids and parents got really excited to see everything I can see on a daily/weekly basis.
For the presentation that I brought to the school I would bring an observation hive for kids to look at. It is basically a small 5 frame hive that has a window to allow the kids to look inside the hive. They love it. The observation hive allows for people to see what is in a beehive without having all the bees flying around. During that presentation I use the hive to show them where the honey is, the pollen and even what the young brood and eggs look like.
Overall these field trips have been a huge success so far and my plan is to continue these while it is still warm this fall and then hopefully do more with a bigger variety of school groups and clubs next year!