Creative Discovery Museum all abuzz for Honey Harvest. SUNDAY & SATURDAY
The Creative Discovery Museum will be buzzing with beekeepers and guests celebrating the work and life of one of nature’s hardest workers, the honeybee, when the 18th annual Honey Harvest is held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, July 28-29.
It’s a museum-wide celebration with regional beekeepers who help guests learn about the importance of honeybees and how honey is made.
“It’s the only game in town as far as kids and beekeeping,” said Dr. Jayne Griffith, the museum’s director of education.
Children can make their own honey lip balm, beeswax candle and honey soap to take home. They’ll get to taste different varieties of honey, participate in honey extraction and meet beekeepers, said Kyrstin Hill, the museum’s public relations coordinator.
“We actually had a couple of girls come a couple of years ago who loved it so much that they are now aspiring beekeepers,” said Hill.
A Welsh Honey and Hive show will take place both days. Guests will view prize-winning honey, honey-related products and also be able to purchase products made by regional beekeepers. Visitors can also visit the museum’s Buzz Alley, a permanent exhibit about bees.
“It’s really important for people to understand just how critical bees are to our world and how much they actually do,” said Hill.
The goal is to keep honeybees in front of the public so that people will be aware of the challenges facing honeybees in the United States and worldwide, said Karen Dewhirst, the museum’s science manager.
There’s a particular mite that infects the honeybee and weakens its colony, she said. Pesticides also cause problems when people spray them on flowers. They usually don’t mean to harm bees, she says, but bees take the chemicals back to their hives and it kills their larvae so the whole colony declines.
With the decline in open spaces where wildflowers grow, there’s also a decline in the amount of food sources for bees. Instead of growing wildflowers in gardens, many people chose hybridized plants that aren’t suitable food sources for bees, said Dewhirst.
“So we do this every year to help keep honeybees on people’s minds,” Welsh said.