I sometimes get called upon to go and talk/teach students about honey bees. This time I was to talk to the kindergarten class at a private school. Since I did not have an observation hive, I needed to take a video with me to show the little ones moving bees.

I got there at the appointed time and took my equipment inside and got everything set up. To speed the process up, I usually take a loaf of crust-less Ironkids bread and, with a knife I supply, have the teacher quarter the slices and be ready to pour a little honey, which I supply, on the squares so the young people can have a taste of honey at the proper time.

This time I did not have the loaf of bread to offer. But, the teacher did. Hallelujah, maybe something will go right for a change. I asked her to put the video tape in the player so it would be ready.

I started off by signing my name in Deaf Sign Language. Then, in Spanish, I asked if anyone spoke Spanish. I followed up by asking the same question in French and German. All this was to get their attention. Sometimes you have to ad-lib to get in the groove. I definitely had their attention. By the way, that is the only words I know in French and German. I then started asking them to tell me what they knew about the honey bees. ‘Stings, boys are called drones, make honey, there is a queen, and drones, and girl bees.’ Pretty typical answers.

Then I tell them about the combs made from wax, show them pictures and a frame of comb that was started, tell them about the nurse bees, housekeepers, a/c and heating bees, guards, and foragers. I then asked the teacher to turn the video on and part of the video has been erased. Ohhh! nooo! I just thought it had stopped raining. Now I had to fill in another gap. Not to worry though, I still had my bee suit, vale, and hard hat.

After I had trouble of getting my vale on, I had very little problems. The rest of the class was great. I had them to stand up and fold their little hand into the armpits and flap their little wings and make a humming sound to show a contented hive, then flap harder and make a zz zz zz zz zz louder sound to show an unhappy hive. We then did a bee dance by going in a line around the room and weaving in and out of tables so they could feel like bees showing where the flowers were.

They learned about the drones dating the queens and beeing so happy that they flew off into the woods and died. They were told that the drones were kicked out of the hives in the wintertime and starve to death. I told them about pollination and what the bees did for their watermelons and fruits. About that time the teacher said that we were getting into the children’s snack time. That was when we did another bee dance and the head scout (me) showed them food and they all got a piece of bread with honey to eat with their snacks that they brought from home. I left them some coloring books about Florida’s insects. I told them they had to color the bee in that book and put the pictures so they could be admired. Said our goodbyes and I left. Great class!