Pacific Science Center has been maintaining an observation beehive for many years to increase the public’s awareness and understanding of honey bees. Every winter our observation beehive is vacated because of the challenges of maintaining an exhibition colony year round. Last week, Life Sciences staff dismantled and cleaned the display case in preparation of the arrival of our new residents.
Then early Saturday morning May 9th, beginning at 7am our apiarist John DeGroot and his assistant, Scott Enright arrived with our new colony. The installation must be done before Pacific Science Center visitors arrive. The cool, early morning temperature kept the bees calm.
Under the direction of Life Sciences manager Sarah Moore, the apiarists first open the beehive that John has brought. Next the men carefully lift out each frame from the hive box while searching for the queen. The queen is then carefully placed into a container for John to mark her thorax with a yellow pen. This doesn’t hurt her and helps our visitors find the queen among the thousands of other bees.
Once the queen has been marked, the enclosure is slowly and carefully reassembled. The eight frames of comb are placed in our vertical hive that is covered in glass and viewable on both sides. Up until now, the entire operation has been performed outdoors. Any straggler bees will find their way back to queen once the hive is in place.
When everything checks out, the frame is lifted up on a cart and wheeled back through the Insect Village to the awaiting exhibit structure. When the entire hive is set into the structure, slides that cover flight holes are removed so that the bees can freely come and go through a Plexiglas tube to the outside world.
A final check must be made of every potential leak to the system. Bees are capable of finding very small cracks in our exhibit which could upset them and our visitors. These potential escape routes have to be sealed with the best means possible: duct tape.
With the entire system in place, our new bees are free to fly around the Seattle Center neighborhood gathering pollen from the many flowers that bloom all summer long.
Visit our observation beehive and watch as the queen and her workers fill the frames with larvae and honey.Want to learn more?
Visit the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association http://www.pugetsoundbees.org/ and the American Beekeeping Federation sites http://abfnet.org/
Hooray, the bees are back. I needed John to come and mark my queens; it was an incredibly stressful process for me, as a novice beekeeper.
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