Saturday 16 September 2017

Tangaroa Bee Trip

For our science trip Nadia, Noah, Jordyn, Kororia, Tuhua, Te Anau and I went to Tangaroa College as part of our science project to observe and learn more information on bees and how the beehives work. Kororia was the photographer and took some photo’s of the activities in the process. Before the activities took place, we ate some sandwiches, fruit, cake and some juice for afternoon tea. We then headed into the classroom and the teachers briefed us and took us through the schedule of what we were going to do for the day. Sarah (one of the teachers) gave us some interesting information about the bees and showed us what the beeswax looks like and described to us what it is used for. After that, Nick (another one of the teachers) took us through the lip balm activity and told us what to do and how to make kawakawa lip balm. So we got stuck into it and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The lip balms at the end of the activity looked amazing and smelt really nice.  
Getting ready to make lip balms
In action!
Our next activity was getting an introduction to data analysis. We measured the temperature of different beakers of water, and then calculated the average. When we mixed all the water together, we found that the final temperature of the mix was the same as the calculated average! There was also a neat trick and the water turned pink with indicator.


The next activity involved looking at the data gathered from the sensor inside the hive. The sensor is a yellow board that uses 5 chips that gathers data from inside the hive by measuring the temperature of the hive in five spots. The graphs above show the level of activity going on inside the hive, it tells us the temperature, tells us if the hive is strong or weak and it shows us that the bees inside are doing a nice job of maintaining the temperature on the cold days. The more stable the temperature, the better the hive is doing - our one is looking good!


Julian with the hive sensor
Data from our hive - it stayed nice and steady on the cold days last week, a good sign
It will be interesting to see what happens to the graph when our bees start to collect honey over the spring and summer!

~ Jesse

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