To bee or not to bee? A glance at the adventures of the beekeeping club:

By: Merlijn de Vroe

14/06/2021

Last week, the second gathering took place at the campus Amsterdam. It was close to 27 degrees, a great day to go up and meet ‘the ladies’!

But, first we went over some more theory that helped us understand the lives of bees more thoroughly. For example, the different roles that bees have in the hive that make it an oiled machine: 48.000 working bees, 2000 drones and of course the one and only Queen. A lot can be learned from bees: they are quick learners, team players and have a strong sense of responsibility. We, Hotelschool students, could learn a lot from them! Going through the stages of development helped us understand how bees grow up: where larvae eat royal jelly for 3 days and continue their diet with honey and ‘bee bread’, the queen eats the royal jelly her whole life. In the Chinese culture, it is believed that royal jelly to be a magic elixer and put it in all sorts of beauty products. Does it work? Who knows! But we prefer to keep it in the hive, where it’s really needed.

Also, we were treated with a delicious dessert inspired by the whole hive (see photos).

After, we had a short video call with Robin, who is the owner of ‘The Hive’ in Haarlem and she introduced her concept, mission and values to us. Soon we will meet Robin for a collaboration.

The Mead tasting, the oldest alcohol in this world, even older than wine, was very interesting and tasty. Mead is fermented honey and water. It was interesting to see how five different Meads (one made by Mr de Vos himself!) all tasted so differently.

Then, it was time to go up to the roof… We went up separately, in two small groups, to try and not disturb the bees. The other group stayed downstairs to design labels that will go on the flower seeds packages that we will be handing out later.

It was awesome to see the hive from up close and experience the things we learned in class. We spotted larvae (who were difficult to see at first), held the honeycombs and we spotted the queen! It was a great first meeting with the bees and we are looking forward to next week.