By Miss Melinda Hamilton, Kindergarten Teacher

Kindergarten students has been learning about insects and their features as they investigate ‘How the World Works’. To support their investigations, students headed to the Caretaker's house to see the beehive in person.

The Radford College Caretaker, Mr Florin Suciu and Ms Cristina Ciordas welcomed the students to their backyard and Florin told the students interesting facts about bees. There are more than 40,000 bees in this particular hive!

The bees collect nectar from flowers nearby and make honey. The bees are more active in warmer weather, but these bees are used to cooler weather since they live in Canberra. We learned that scout bees go and find the best flowers and then communicate to the other bees where to go by doing a waggle dance.

Ms Ciordas baked some delicious honey biscuits with honey from the hive to share with students. For many this was the highlight of the visit!

After learning so much about bees, the Kindergarten students wanted to plant some more bee friendly plants in our playground area to provide even more ways for the Radford bees to collect nectar and make honey. Students planted some native trees along the new bush stairs connecting Pre-K to Kindy and are excited to care for these plants as they grow for many years to come.

I love honey and it was so yummy! – William

We could see all the bees going in and out of the hive. They were flying very fast – Isabella

My honey biscuit was so good – Harsheen

There are some bees that don’t have a stinger. I have a beehive like that one at my house, but it has different legs – Ollie