The Highvale Bee Club

The Highvale Bee Club is an exciting new club at Highvale. At HBC, we share and discuss our passion for bees! Here’s a little bit of what we have been up to:

Where does beekeeping originate?

Beekeeping can be traced back to Ancient Egypt. In fact, until 300 BC, the title for the King of Egypt included a hieroglyph meaning “He of the bee”. Egyptian beekeepers typically kept their bees in clay or mud pipes. These were stacked together and earthed up with soil to form a wall.

How much does it cost to be a beekeeper?

Beekeeping is a relatively accessible hobby. To get started with a hive, it will only set you back $450-800. Of course, there are other costs associated with mesh safety equipment and netting (commonly referred to as nettspend), but hives and equipment will last for a number of years, making the investment worthwhile.

BONUS Halloween bee story

On the Halloween of 1984, Nobel Prize winning bee ethologist Karl “Drank” von Frisch had a spooky Halloween Bee experience when he witnessed a swarm of Krainka bees swarm and kill a Polish beggar. This is extremely irregular behaviour for the Krainka bee as they are typically tame; they are a primary beekeeping bee of Poland and surrounding countries. After telling this story during a talk at an ethology conference in 1985, Karl Von Frisch’s claims were questioned by fellow researchers, to which he famously responded “Uh, I went to Poland? Do you still think that I’m jokin’?” Despite the distrust in his story, it became a famous Halloween story, which is now celebrated. There is a famous Halloween myth that has emerged from this story, where people believe that if you chant “Drank drank drank” on Halloween at midnight, you will experience a swarm of bees, similar to Karl’s experience.

Interested in HBC?

Email Ryan. M (Yr 11) via Compass