For humans, if your home has a recognizable scent, that may or may not be a good thing. But for bees, it is a necessary part of life, and of finding its way home. Bees find their way to their own hive because of a distinct scent that they can recognize. If you want to see a real beehive up close, and safely, you can even come to the Museum and see our beehive exhibit, made possible by the Junior League of Miami.

Because bees are are so beguiling in many ways, they are the subject of one of the Museum’s Early Childhood Hands-On Science (ECHOS) curriculum units. After receiving training on the materials from Museum education staff, pre-school teachers throughout Miami-Dade County and Head Start schools, lead the children in exploring their world, as well as the bees’ world. The children learned first-hand that bees know which hive is their own only by the scent, by becoming bees themselves. Each was given a cup with a scent, and they had to explore their classroom to find the hive that matched their scent. But they did not want to stop exploring even after they found their hive. One wanted to draw his own beehive based on the ECHOS Busy, Buzzing Bees book, one wanted to see how the beehive model in the classroom compared to photos of real hives, and a couple wanted to match up the scents of all the “hives” in the room. These children in the photos below are true explorers.

In 1949, The Junior League of Miami’s Project Finding Committee decided that the children of Dade County needed a place to explore, expand their minds, and experiment with the world around them. In other words, they needed a science museum. And it only took a year to get the ball rolling with a lot of momentum. The Junior Museum of Miami opened in a house on the corner of Biscayne Boulevard and 26th Street, but it didn’t take long for it to outgrow its first home. After a few years, moves, and name changes, the Museum opened at its current location on the grounds of the historic Vizcaya complex – and now, it’s growing even more, with construction under way for the new Patricia and Philip Frost Museum of Science in downtown Miami. It all began with a simple but clear vision from The Junior League of Miami, and the League continues to support the Museum today, over 60 years later. As visitors to the early science museum will tell you, children would come from all over just to see “the beehive in the chimney.” So, what better way to support the Museum than to bring back the bees? (The non-killer kind.) With a donation from the Junior League of Miami to build a brand new beehive exhibit, and help from Bunch Farms in installing the hive, the next generation of Dade County’s children can see (and even hear) inside the busy buzzing lives of bees.

Junior League President Katie Lane Arriola, Museum President Gillian Thomas, Junior League Past President Dana Martorella

Junior League of Miami members are joined by their kids, with Museum President Gillian Thomas, by the Bees exhibit

Bee Puppet Show!

The new Bees exhibit

The busy buzzing bees at the Museum

Recently, the Junior League of Miami wanted to support a new project at the Museum targeted for young children. The idea of a bee hive was agreed upon, and as luck would have it, we later discovered a beehive in an avocado tree outside the Museum. The family-owned Bunch Farms volunteered to help with the Observation Bee Hive Project, which will allow visitors to see inside a bee hive (safely) to observe the life and times of a honey bee. Inese from Bunch Farms, who has been working on the project, comes from a long line of farmers. Her grandfather started beekeeping as a hobby in Latvia, and after moving to Miami, finishing school, and becoming a certified beekeeper, Inese is now following in his footsteps at Bunch Farms. After locating the queen bee in the Museum’s hive, Inese relocated the hive to Bunch Farms apiary to observe the colony, and by the second day in their new home, the bees were already organizing themselves and bringing pollen back to their hive. But they still needed a little encouragement, in the form of some honey and pollen from Bunch Farms, to stay and build their new home. To be ready for relocation to their permanent home at the Museum, Inese will need to split and “re-queen” the colonies, because each hive needs their own queen to keep a calm and friendly hive. Once the hive is installed at the Museum, children and adults alike will be able to literally see inside the amazing lives of bees.

In the video below, you can see a new queen bee communicating with bees in her hive, letting them know that she is present (and letting any other queen bees know that they need to leave).