We have bees! Recently, one of our grade deans came up with the idea to purchase beehives for the school. He recruited a student, who spread the word to a math teacher, who spread the word to a teacher in our department, and then we became completely obsessed--more so when the hives were installed right outside the library windows!
The Environmental Science class helped build the hive enclosure:
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| The Environmental Science class at work with the library wing in the background. |
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| See that globe in the window behind the students? That's one of the library windows! |
Interested students and teachers (and Lizz) were on hand when the hives were delivered:
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| They delivered the bees at night because that's when bees sleep! Who knew? |
And now, nearly every day, one of us is likely to be seen peering through the enclosure and watching the busy bees at work:
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| Lizz watches at the bees as I take photos of her through our very dirty library windows. |
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| One of two beehives and a few of the 6,000 bees. |
And of course we had to do a display of bee books:
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| I highly recommend The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the entire Marry Russell series by Laurie R. King. |
Bees must have been buzzing in the school consciousness for some time; we had no problem putting together a display about bees, insects, and books with "bee" in the title. And this wasn't even everything in the catalog:
Clan Apis, an educational graphic novel about bees;
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (sequel to
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and
The Girl Who Played With Fire); and
Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey were all checked out. Other fiction tie-ins included
The Beekeeper's Apprentice (a Sherlock Holmes spin-off) and
The Secret Life of Bees. We had four books additional books that focused on bees and the history of honey, and of course I couldn't resist adding an old VHS copy of episode three of David Attenborough's documentary
The Secret Life of Plants called--you guessed it--"The Birds and the Bees."
