Residents at Old Charlton House in Cowes were literally ‘buzzing’ on World Bee Day after an informative and entertaining talk about beekeeping.
Teri and Carol from Ark Park Apiary visited the home on Saturday (20th May) and showed the residents how to keep bees and what is involved in the process. They have several hives and they displayed some of the honeycomb they have harvested.
Bees are so important to our survival, however, sometimes they don’t choose sensible places to build their hive, in which case the ladies from Ark Park are happy to collect the bees and relocate them to a better place if they are able. Teri and Carol demonstrated how they would accomplish this with the use of a skep, which is a basket with a tiny letterbox hole in it.
They place a sheet on the ground and the skep under the bees, then with a single bang of the branch, they hope to dislodge and catch the queen. By evening time the bees will have followed the queen into the skep and the ladies can then relocate them all. Quarr Abbey is always happy to take them as they teach beekeeping there.
The residents learned that 1 hive can have around 60,000 bees living inside! The bees communicate with each other telling the hive where there is a good food source by doing a wiggle dance, which was ably demonstrated by Teri, much to the delight of residents. They move in a figure of 8 pattern, wiggling, and each wiggle reveals the distance and direction they need to fly in to locate the food source. What makes this extra amazing is that they perform this ritual in the hive where it is dark!
Teri and Carol treated the residents to a jar of their bee-autiful honey, which was spread on toast and sampled. It was declared to be most delicious honey, far better than shop bought honey. They are looking forward to eating more of it on their toast at breakfast!
Resident, Brenda, said that she had never realised that bees were so clever and that they were obviously good mathematicians.
Another resident, Daphne, used to keep bees herself and enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce about her past life.
Debbie Webb, Activities Coordinator, said “we are delighted to have been able to offer this wonderful experience for our residents. I would like to thank Ark Park Apiary for their fascinating insight into the life of bees. At Old Charlton House we strive to provide a varied programme of life enrichment, which is meaningful to all of our residents.”
Teri and Carol are volunteers who enjoy visiting organisations, in particular care homes and schools, to emphasise the importance of bees and how we, as a society, can help. Old Charlton House residents will now be planting bee friendly flowers in their accessible garden to encourage the bees to visit.
The dance is actually called the “waggle dance”.