Did you know that when bees are about 12 days old, they develop glands in their abdomen that produce wax? The wax comes out of little openings on the side of their abdomen. The bees chew the wax and add it to the honey comb.

Bees make honey from pollen and nectar. They feed honey to their young and store honey to eat during the winter. But not all bees make honey.

There are over 20,000 species of bees!

If predators, like wasps, invade the hive, bees will ball together and vibrate their muscles. This generates enough heat to kill the intruder.

My co-leader and I recently took our Girl Scout Troop to Backyard Bees, an educational program at a location in Orange, CA. We are working on growing a tower garden right now and thought this would be a great opportunity to teach them additional information about gardening and help them learn about the helpful bees.

Backyard Bees was a delightful adventure. We started by harvesting seeds from cotton and amaranth. Janet showed the girls gourds and talked about different uses for them. We met her chickens, talked about eggs, and learned about some of the other plants that were growing there. The girls got to meet the resident horse and see where the bee hive was.

Each girl got to plant their own seeds, either cotton or amaranth, to bring home and grow. My daughter chose cotton and my son chose amaranth – he’s a Cub Scout and gets to join us on many of our Girl Scout adventures, too. Both plants are already growing nicely and we are excited to add them to our garden when they get a little bigger.

We went into the honey house where Janet shared a lot of educational information about bees and what they do. We got to see harvested bee’s wax and sample the honey she collected from her very own bees. It’s amazing to see how much can be created from bees and honey. The educational tour and program lasted just over an hour and was packed full of fun and information. We left with lots of ideas about what we can grow in our garden at home. This is a great program for scouts and homeschool groups.

For more information on Backyard Bees visit  http://www.backyardbees.net/.

Here are some great books about bees!