Our bee hive is doing really well.

The queen has been laying lots of eggs and there are now thousands of bees in the hive.

The hot weather has also meant that they are making honey for us!

We are going to split the hive into 2 next week and grow a new queen. This is the perfect time of year to do this because there are drone (male bees) around.

We wanted to increase the number of drones in our hive, so we put in a shorter frame to the bottom box. This left a space which the bees filled with wax, but they built boy bee wax (the cells are bigger).

The queen has now laid eggs in this and in 24 days, they will hatch.

In this picture below, you can see the larva, which means it is between 4 and 9 days old. The bigger the larva, the older it is.

Check back next week to see how the splitting into two hives goes!

Today, Primary 6 went insect hunting with Mr McMullan to see if we could find some bees in the local area.

We found some amazing insects including a red tailed bumblebee and a really weird fly that looked like a wasp!

https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/identification-tips/

Here is a great website to help us identify the different types of bumblebee!

Check out some of the pictures and videos.