{"id":8094,"date":"2019-05-28T13:20:50","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T17:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/?p=8094"},"modified":"2019-06-28T13:22:15","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T17:22:15","slug":"italian-honey-bees-find-a-home-at-foa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/news\/italian-honey-bees-find-a-home-at-foa","title":{"rendered":"Italian Honey Bees Find a Home at FOA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-540x397.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8099\" width=\"136\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-540x397.jpeg 540w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-270x199.jpeg 270w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-768x565.jpeg 768w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-200x147.jpeg 200w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-125x92.jpeg 125w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-60x44.jpeg 60w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-85x63.jpeg 85w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/beehive-1-80x59.jpeg 80w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 136px) 100vw, 136px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>We are excited to announce that we now have a honey&nbsp;bee&nbsp;hive that houses Italian honey&nbsp;bees! We have cultural diversity everywhere here at FOA even in our honey&nbsp;bees!&nbsp; Our hive&nbsp;of Italian honeybees (Apis mellifera) includes approximately 10,000 bees, including nurse bees, forager bees,&nbsp;guard bees, drone bees, and a newly mated queen bee. Our hive is located on the nature trail next to the stream and will be available for observation to our students.&nbsp;Bees are so fascinating and essential for our existence. We know this will spur a lot of new research and interest among our students.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once the bees establish&nbsp;themselves and draw out new honeycomb, the queen will start laying eggs. The first bees will&nbsp;hatch in 21 days. Up to 2,000 bees per day could hatch during peak foraging. New supers will&nbsp;be added as the colony size grows. The hive may have as many as 60,000 bees by midsummer.&nbsp;If the current hive is growing well, it can be split&nbsp;to start a new hive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-540x360.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8100\" srcset=\"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-540x360.jpeg 540w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-270x180.jpeg 270w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-768x512.jpeg 768w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-200x133.jpeg 200w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-125x83.jpeg 125w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-60x40.jpeg 60w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-85x57.jpeg 85w, http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/97509788-3829-45F4-9E58-BBE53BC481F4-1-80x53.jpeg 80w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p> We also have a&nbsp;blog&nbsp;dedicated to&nbsp;our Italian honeybees where you can read about the exciting&nbsp;developments in our hive and also subscribe to it if you&#8217;d like. We are so grateful for our beekeeper\/&nbsp;FOA&nbsp;parent, Dan Magner, for overseeing this amazing project and being a mentor to our students. Several of the Upper Elementary students have taken a special interest in learning about these extraordinary&nbsp;creatures and how to care for them. These junior beekeepers got to experience a hive check and even taste a tiny bit of the sweet honey our bees have&nbsp;made. To keep up with what is happening in our hive, go to <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/hivehappenings.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/hivehappenings.wordpress.com\/.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interesting facts and safety&nbsp;information&nbsp;to share with your child:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>This&nbsp;species produces more&nbsp;honey than it&nbsp;consumes and this will allow us to collect honey from them. An established hive will produce up to&nbsp;60 lbs (5 gallons) of honey per year. Generally, not as much or sometimes no honey is&nbsp;collected during the first year because the bees are using much of it to build new wax&nbsp;honeycombs. Bees must consume 6-8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax.<br>\u2022 Will honeybees sting? Honeybees are very gentle creatures! You could stand at the front&nbsp;entrance of their hive all day and they wouldn\u2019t bother you. Honeybees really don\u2019t want to&nbsp;sting you. That being said, they will sting if they feel you are threatening their eggs or their&nbsp;honey, and you don\u2019t back off after ample warning. In other words, you are most likely to be&nbsp;stung when the hive is open.<br>\u2022 How can I tell if the bees are feeling threatened? They will give you plenty of warning that is&nbsp;pretty easy to figure out. Some bees will come out of the hive and bump into you repeatedly&nbsp;as a way to say, \u201cback off a little bit.\u201d If<br>the person is being bumped naturally takes a few steps back, it\u2019s usually enough to satisfy the bees. If that doesn\u2019t work, they give&nbsp;off an alarm pheromone that smells just like bananas! It\u2019s really quite amazing!<\/li><li>Why do you need a bee suit and smoke when opening the hives for inspection or to collect honey? Bees feel threatened when their hive is opened. Smoke is used primarily for two reasons: it masks their alarm pheromone so they can\u2019t signal other bees; and it simulates a nearby&nbsp;fire, which encourages the bees to start eating honey in lieu of all else in case they need&nbsp;to depart in a hurry. Since the bees are so busy doing other things, smoke makes it easy to check the hives. The bee suit is an extra precaution, but really all that is needed is a veil.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are excited to announce that we now have a honey&nbsp;bee&nbsp;hive that houses Italian honey&nbsp;bees! We have cultural diversity everywhere here at FOA even in our honey&nbsp;bees!&nbsp; Our hive&nbsp;of Italian honeybees (Apis mellifera) includes approximately 10,000 bees, including nurse bees, forager bees,&nbsp;guard bees, drone bees, and a newly mated queen bee. Our hive is located [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":8099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8094"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foastatic.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}