Recently, we had a request to place an educational hive at a school we have provided pollination presentations to in the past.  The Little Harbour Elementary School is located in Portsmouth, NH and borders Little Harbor here on the New Hampshire Seacoast.   The group at the school wanted a hive on site to help with their STEM education program.   After meeting with the team at the school we decided to place an existing hive along the shoreline that borders the school.  

The hive location required us transporting the full hive from another site, across a field, down some stairs on a dock and along some wet marsh.  The move was performed during the weekend when no teachers or faculty would be around.  
The bees took to the location very well and were able to work a large area of golden rod and aster that surround the harbor.
Since this post, we have had over 5 presentations from grades 1-5 where we used the bees from this hive to help educate the students.
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We look forward to working with LHS and our other schools in the coming year.

For the last couple of years, we have been working with the Rye Conservation Corp and Rockingham County Conservation District to provide pollination education to the community and area schools.  Recently, we had students from the Rye Junior High come down to tour the farm, harvest pumpkins they planted in the Spring, and tour the apiary.

We love working with the students and we bring out our charts and educational materials whenever we can to help demonstrate the importance of pollinators.  One of the most effective learning aids is the observation hive that allows us to pull a frame of bees from an existing hive and place it in a protected plexiglass construct.  This allows us to show the different types of bees, honey, brood, and pollen.   Everyone loves to see the queen so we are always sure to have her in the observation hive.   If we capture just the right bees at the right time we can demonstrate the bee dance used by foraging bees to communicate the location and type of pollen/honey they have found.  While the queen is always a hit a dancing bee is one of the most amazing sites that we can show to a group of students.

If you are interested in having a honey bee overview or visit to an apiary please reach out to us to learn how we can make it happen.
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