Bees for OMSI Beard of Bees event

[Andrea Middleton]

I am the event coordinator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and I am working on a Beard of Bees event for the museum as part of our current exhibit, Scream! The Science of Fear. The science museum up in Vancouver, BC did the same event and it was very successful for them.

I am working with the same beekeeper who did their event, John Gibeau of the Honeybee Centre (www.honeybeecentre.com) and the plan is to apply three bee beards on three different volunteers on Saturday, Oct. 31. John will be coming down from Vancouver to do the beards, but what he is unable to bring with him are the bees, which is where you come in.

We would need to borrow 3 colonies of bees for the day. John would like to have 10 to choose from, but we only need 3. We would borrow the bees for the event day and return them to you immediately. The bee beards are not harmful to the bees in any way.

Is this something that you are interested in helping with, please contact me at [e-mail] or 503.797.4677. John is happy to talk with any one about how it works and what it entails for the bees.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[bugleman]

Hey Herb! Should I let her use some of my bees?

[Electric Herb]

Some of the super aggressive ones? That would cause an interesting session at OMSI.

I wonder how moving the colonies to OMSI and back so quickly would affect them heading into winter.

[Sowers]

Usually for bee beards they shake bees into a package box with a queen.(about one pound I think). Bees are then moved to the location where the beard will be made; shook out and allowed to cluster onto a set of sticks much like a cross. (long vertical, short horizontal near top of vertical) Queen is in cage tied at the crossing of the sticks. (nowadays a small beeswax disk impregnated with queen pheromone is usually used instead of the queen) After the bees settle down the disk or queen is removed from the cluster and tied under the chin of the person receiving the bee beard. The cross with bees are brought to the queen or disk and the bees are gently shook onto the persons chest. With a gentle push the bees can be moved to form a typical beard shape.

I have had a bee beard several times. Feeling the bees grab onto your skin, great fun and wonder.

I would think this time of year removing bee for even a few hours would be hard on bees and beekeeper.