With our recent visit to the free farm under our belts the boys have been enjoying nature and the outside world. We have spent as much time as the weather will allow to stay outside burning off additional energy. While out today they stumbled upon what they thought was a dead bee (with a few shrieks of horror!). I have recently read that bees can be quite tired around this time of year and a lot of the time they are in fact resting and not dead. So I googled all about saving the bees and what I needed to do.

Making Sugar Water

So quick to act we mixed a teaspoonful of water with two teaspoonfuls of sugar, mixed it and put a few drops by the “dead” bee. Fortunately it quickly came back to life and started to tuck into the sugar water.

I have never seen a bee that close before let alone see its tongue coming out to feed. It was really amazing and both the boys were really excited to see it up close. So I thought it only appropriate to share the footage with all my readers! My eldest son even took the video into school so his classmates could see. I think experiences like this help raise an inquisitive child.

Having this experience the boys are now a lot less fearful of the big bumble bees as they have now seen the harmless and gentle side. Not that they are aggressive anyway! I also really enjoyed helping the bee and getting the footage was an additional bonus!

I hope to capture more of nature over the coming months, it is something that we love learning about. Eldest has been reading through his kids national geographic magazines, when I put him to bed tonight he gave me some fascinating facts, the highlight was about the Duck-billed platypus, it does not actually have a stomach! It has evolved not to need one, the platypus features regularly in our conversations as it also lays eggs and is one of the only venomous mammals.

My wife wrote about another bee we saved in her weekly update post. She managed to add a photo where you can see its long tongue making the most of the sugar water. So rather than be afraid of bees please consider saving the bees instead!