Bee Hive Investigation

My mom gave "A" a bee hive that had fallen. He was chomping at the bits to dig in and explore. After covering the table with paper I pulled out the hive, but told him we needed to think like true scientist. First he had to guess what bee it belonged to. He thought the nest belonged to a yellow jacket. Then I told him he needed to record his observations with drawings and I would take notes. It was a relatively small nest. We looked at the paper surrounding and found striations (lines of different colors). It had three layers, soft, and easy to break. Inside was a honeycomb with a darker middle hanging down. This was hard to break. We noticed some white balls on some of the combs. "A" tried to break through by stabbing it but found it extremely difficult although it looked fragile. However, we could easily pull it outward. Inside was a bee exoskeleton. We also observed some black pointing things in some of the uncovered combs. We pulled it out and couldn't make out what it was. We could tell that it was extremely smelly (decomposing smell) and then I saw a part move. At this point I felt we had enough observations (and was getting grossed out) so we discarded of the hive.

Observations:

Our found hive. After investigation we found out it was a wasp nest.

Magnifying Glass-an important tool for observations

Recording data

This is out of focus but the little thing on paper is a bee exoskeleton (later we found out an unhatched bee)

The small black thing we found out was decomposing and dying larvae.

After the observation we did some research to make sense of what we discovered. After scouring the internet these are Our Findings:

1. The nest belonged to a honeycomb wasp
2. The paper surrounding is actually scrapings of wood that the queen bee attains from fences, sheds, carports, etc-not trees! She then mixes it with her saliva to make a paste. There is a type of wax component because it is waterproof.
3. Although it is called a honeycomb wasp that is for the shape of the hive. They do not make honey. Each comb holds one egg, that hatches to be a worker bee larvae 
4. The wasp in North America is called a Yellow Jacket. 

Did you learn something? We sure did!

Bug Observatory

Both "A" and I are not super fond of insects. "A" simply runs screaming like a girl at the sight of the tiniest bug or spider. I am trying to teach him if you look at something like a scientist it can actually be fascinating and not so scary. Backyard Science week of the summer challenge gave us the perfect time to try out our bug investigation.

I picked up a book at our local library called Backyard Science by Christopher Maynard. Inside they had an idea using recycled materials to make a bug observatory. We took a recycled yogurt container and put some scraps of food in it. Our first bait was some cookie crumbs and two tiny pieces of cheese. Later we added a small french fry and apple flesh. Then we looked in our yard to find an area "A" thought bugs may live. We  dug a hole and put the yogurt cup in the ground so the top is level with the ground. Then place small river rocks near the cup and prop wood over it. That way bugs can get in and out but the habitat remains dry. Then let observations begin!

A cross-section of the observatory (taken from the Backyard Science book)

I then made an observation sheet and decorated it with our bug stencils. "A" let me help decorate which was fun. What can say I love coloring!!! We go and check out our observatory every 2-3 hours. So far we have swarms of ants, two slugs, and Daddy Long-Leg spiders. Some interesting observations: the ants broke down the cookie crumb into this mushy wet mass (not sure how), the slugs were only there in the early morning (my guess has to do with temperatures being lower then), and lastly- only the apple and cookies seem to interest the ants. I had "A" make a hypothesis from this observation: "Ants like sugar!" Yay for science observations! I think we will keep the observatory going til tomorrow morning and then quit feeding the local insects.

Our covered observatory (I just used materials I had lying around)

Our observatory with slugs and ants eating our bait

Our observation sheet!