LEWIS COUNTY BEEKEEPERS' ASSOCIATION                                                          

Veteran home school teacher & LCBA member Sharette Giese led children in her interactive game, "Bee Buzz ~ Who's Who in the Hive": scroll down for photos.

Who does what in a honey bee hive?  Sharette & visitors to the Floral Building on Kids' Day at the Fair explored a bee's career choices. . . . though "Bee Movie" suggests that a bee can grow up to be whatever he wants, that turns out to be - well, not quite true!

Below, the game starts with Little Miss Friendly volunteering to serve as Queen Bee: 

 Next jobs:  who feeds the Queen? And who takes care of the baby bees (eggs & larvae)?

Above, Nurse & Feeder Bees get ready for work. Below, Alesha holds up a hammer as Sharette seeks a volunteer to be Builder Bee & build comb in the hive...

Builder Bee needs wax to build with, though: so who wants to make wax in the hive? 

Sharette holds up a glue stick ~ someone needs to take on the job of making propolis to help hold the hive together....

Below, Sharette holds up toy swords to show another important job in the hive:  Guard Bee. . .

Next, with Guard Bees fending off yellow jackets & other would-be intruders, hives need Undertaker Bees:

Above, Alesha volunteers to be Undertaker Bee.

Now:  what DOES a boy bee do in the hive? 

It's a pretty cushy life, being a drone . . . till fall comes & the workers kick them out of the hives so they don't have to waste resources feeding drones in winter!

Above, left, a worker bee, &, right, a drone - note how the worker's body is more slender than the drone bee, at right, whose wings are as long as his body and whose eyes are much bigger ~ the better to see a queen with!

Above, Alesha & Sharette (left) seek a volunteer to be the Groomer Bee as the Nurse Bee, Queen Bee, & Feeder Bee look on; below, a real queen bee surrounded by her retinue (photo courtesy of Jennifer Taylor).

 Below, reviewing the job of the queen:  to be mated and lay up to 2000 eggs per day - until she is replaced ("superseded") by the worker bees...

Below, Groomer & Nurse Bees are part of the Queen's retinue:

Below, Groomer Bee gets busy:

Below, boys are beginning to realize that girls do pretty much all the work in the hive....

But wait, there's more:  Sharette holds up a fan to show that with all that egg laying, grooming, feeding, nursing, and wax building, temperatures can rise high in the hive - so someone needs to be a Fanner Bee!

. . . but only girls do jobs in the hive, so only girls can be Guard Bees:  we're running out of girls in the audience, so volunteer Tomme T takes on the swords:

With Queen, Feeder, Nurse, Groomer, Builder, Wax-maker, Glue-maker, Fanner, Guard, & Undertaker Bees assigned to their parts, what's left?  Forager bees!  Someone has to bring home nectar & pollen....so we need Forager Bees & Honey-Making Bees, who take the nectar from the Foragers, digest it in their honey stomachs, & turn it into honey for the hive. . . .

Drones ~ boy bees ~ have one job:  to mate the queen, after which they die.  If they haven't mated a queen yet, they relax & get fed by the workers ~ represented, below, by lying around holding remotes: