Homeschool Friday

School hasn’t officially started here at home.  However, yesterday we got to see many of our friends in our homeschool group yesterday as we met for a fun field trip at a honey farm.

It must have been a popular field trip because I’ve never seen so many families from our support group show up to one event like this before.  From babies to teenagers, all the kids were there.

I did not know there was a honey farm in our area.  Silje and David were both very, very nervous about seeing all the bees.  I thought that education would calm those fears and it turns out that the bees were all out in their fields anyway, and there were only a few stragglers by the windows of the honey factory.

This farm had 6000 hives, and 60,000 bees per hive.  You do the math.

A sweet woman and her grandson (I assume) gave the presentation where the kids learned a lot about bees.  Well, Silje and Elias learned all about bees.  David was overwhelmed by the crowd of people (like always) had a mini flip out session and then I let him run off and play with the Grandma Bee Lady’s grandson.  They climbed trees during the presentation.

We learned that the number one consumer of bees wax is the Catholic church.  Most other churches use part paraffin wax candles.  Interesting.

We learned about the 3 different roles of bees: queen, drone, and worker.  We learned how queens get overthrown, how often they are replaced in farms like this one, and where bees go for the winter.  I guess bees don’t freeze up here in the winter, but there is nothing for them to eat, so this farm loads up the hives on a semi truck and trucks them down to Mississippi and California to go help the farmers pollinate down there for the winter.  Again…fascinating, yes?

Then we broke up into 3 groups according to age: big kids, small kids, and really small kids.  There were 3 places to tour: the factory, the playground they had outside, and the car garage.  Silje headed with her group to the factory, and I headed to the playground with the boys.  Solveig was hanging with me as well.

When it was our group’s turn to tour the factory both boys dug their heels in as they protested leaving the playground.  A veteran homeschooling mom said she’d watch the boys so I could tour the factory.  That way I could tell them about it later.  I thought she was wise, so Solveig and I went with the group to the factory.

I took pictures so David could see honey shoot out into big barrels.  When the barrels are full, they weigh 700 lbs.  Cool, huh?

We saw several empty hives.  (Like I said, the hives were currently on the land gathering pollen.)  My pictures of the hives and the machines slicing the wax from the honey did not turn out as good as I’d have hoped. 

When the factory tour was over, it was time for the little kids to tour the garage.  My thinking was “so what…a garage…”

Turns out the honey farmer is an old Ford collector too.  For that, the boys left the playground immediately.