At the North Carolina state beekeeping conference in Wilkesboro my wife and I joined up to be volunteers for the bee exhibit at the North Carolina zoo, If you want to talk to people about bees the zoo is the place to go. I received this e-mail from the volunteer coordinators. Just thought I would share.
A plan has been developed between the Zoo Beekeeping staff and Don Hopkins for monitoring the Observation Hive this winter. The decision is to try to keep the honey bees in the hive the entire winter. The hive has the two insulated cover panels and also a light for extra warmth if needed and temperature probes. Temperatures will be monitored each day by the staff. If the outside temperature reaches 55 degrees or above and the hive's inside temperature is 50 degrees, the keeper can choose to open the cover panels for the warm part of the day, possibly until 3 PM. John Groves and Hendrik Smock, a zoo beekeeper on site will be the ones working on this experiment. Their phone numbers are listed in the information notebook kept in the storage room of the exhibit. The objective is to have the panels off and the hive open for the visitors when the temperature criteria are met.
The decision to open the cover panels is the zoo keeper's and will be made independently of the presence of any Beekeeper Volunteers. This year will be an experiment to see what is possible and the data collected by the zoo staff should be interesting. We wanted you to know where the honey bees would spend the cold weather to come and to understand that a temperature experiment is on going. If any Beekeeper Volunteers decide to spend time in the exhibit, please respect the experiment in progress.
The importance of the Beekeeper Volunteer presence at the Honey Bee Exhibit has been invaluable. The visitor and beekeeper interactions have been incredible. Thank you for raising the value of this exhibit through your commitment to working with the visitors. Your comments and suggestions would also be appreciated.