Record beesuit + beehives on the site

When it comes to fabric

Most of the bee suits are made from a light, comfortable, breathable blend of cotton and polyester (35% cotton, 65% polyester), for comfort, long-term durability, washability, and minimal shrinkage. A cotton/polyester blend is used, since 100% cotton shrinks and is not as durable over time as a blend. Nylon suits are not as breathable and are less comfortable in warm weather.

If fitted properly (not too tight), a bee suit keeps stingers away from your skin. A suit that is baggy will work more effectively, where a suit that is too small will sometimes allow stings at the areas on the body where the fabric is tight against the skin. But a suit mustn't be too baggy either, bees can get trapped between the fabric and get aggressive.

The veil is darker to eliminate glare, so it is easy to see through when it is pulled over the head.

A material that would give you absolute sting protection would do so by physically preventing stinger penetration of the fabric. This would require a suit made from a tight, thick weave of a material like Kevlar and such a fabric would not ventilate very well, making it too hot to wear. A material that could absolutely "guarantee" no stings would also be rather expensive.

Beekeeping as educational component

When we are concerned about the environment around us, make everything can become learning resources, more and more people will be successful like Watt invented the steam engine through look at a kettle. When we start to pay attention to the farmers and beekeepers, the distance and barrier between human and nature can be reduced.

‘People are certainly becoming more interested in bees and it's great to have this interest’. Ruth, who is secretary of Dorset County Beekeepers, said，‘And <the threat of varroa> has changed our beekeeping but if people really love and understand their bees it's easy to do it. It just takes a bit more time and dedication’. (2009) Nowadays, most of people probably know that bees are beneficial to human beings, but which are totally concepts for the city people. Is there an opportunity to let people to put on the bee suits, look at how to use the bee hives, and how to develop related plants, how to collect honey... this process of beekeeping?

Life as education – the education comes from life, and then goes back in life, this process in order to make a better life for people. Thus the content of environmental education should come from the life more than others. Thus beekeeping course could be a positive impact on people, especially on children. ‘Children are intellectually curious, keen to find thing out, and actively engaged in making sense of the world they live in’. (1994:3) If children could do more of the kind of work we have described and suggested, they would get, not just knowledge, but skill. This is important to a child. ‘To be able to do something well, to get visible results, gives him/her a sense of his/hers own being and worth which he/she can never get from regular school, from teacher-pleasing, on matter how good is at it. There is too little opportunity for this in school’. (1983:212) 

Whether the Herbart’s pedagogical theory or Dewey’s theories of progressive education, they have emphasized the interest and practice are both important in the education. The value of interest on the one hand is cognition, which is help people to explore and understand the world; on the other hand, a more important aspect is action, which could push people into practice to promote the ecological nature and reform society. As social, scientific, cultural studies are the main parts in Goldsmiths, we should go with practice of ecologies, technology and society to be a sustainable university.

‘Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind’. As Dewey says, ‘Not knowledge or information, but self-realization, is the goal’. (1971:9) Therefore, the beekeeping at Goldsmiths is not only a course to teach the technology and skills to students and kids, it is also a workshop to cultivate an interest, which could be an ethical culture. The beekeeping workshop can get people to work with and understand their bees; the relationship of human-bees could be changed to a new way like the bees can teaching us, training us, food us, even plant us. We aim to raise people’s awareness about the value of beekeeping for sustainable development, and promote sustainable beekeeping to conserve biodiversity on both a local and global scale.

Reference:

- BBC (2009). Available at: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/dorset/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8387000/8387841.stm

 (8/December/2010)

- Darling, J. 1994. Child-Centered Education and its critics. London. Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd.

- Holt, J. 1983. How Children Learn. London. Penguin Books. 

- Dewey, J. 1971. The Child and the Curriculum and The School and Society. London. The University Of Chicago Press. 

How far do bees fly

We have two hives at Goldsmiths, they are placed at a little piece of land that's quite wild. At the moment there are no plants on Goldsmiths ground that are planted especially for the bees but these bees have a very good foraging source due to the amount of back gardens and parks in the neighborhood.


On an average flight, bees will fly one mile (back and forth). You can see what they can reach in the two pictures below. The scale is different in these two pictures but the circle shows a distance of half a mile.

  
The furthest a bee will fly is 5 miles (back and forth), the red circles below show a distance of 2.5 mile. They can even fly to Greenwich, Southwark, Deptford and Peckham Rye Park!

Sketches!

These are some of our first sketches. We would like to try to interest kids in wearing the bee-suit. Hip-hop style, add some gadgets etc.

 

Interviewing beekeepers about the bee-suit

In an earlier blog we were talking about redesigning the bee-suit so that it's more functional and usable for children. We would also like to add gadgets to this suit and let it interact with the beehive and maybe your I-phone (or any other smart phone), this could be made possible with the use of intelligent fabrics. 

In order to redesign something you need to start with the basics. In this case this meant interviewing beekeepers about their suits. Some points from them:

- A body-warmer could be enough, a whole suit is not necessary. But you'll need to wear gloves and a thick sweater and trousers.
- Most of the suits don't have a zipper, this makes it pretty difficult to put the thing on.
- If you turn your head (with some of the suits), the hood won't turn with you, so you'll be looking at fabric.
- If the fabric will stick to your body, the bees can sting right through it.
- The bees will find every hole in your suit, it's important to keep this in mind.
- Not a lot of beekeepers use colored clothing but there isn't  specific reason for this.
- The material for the suit needs to be light, sting-proof, ventilating and easy to handle.
- Bees will get caught in loose and wrinkled clothing and become aggressive.
- Bees need a relaxed approach, children under the age of ten could be to wild > stinging bees won't let the children respect the bees more.

 
 

Redesigning the bee-suit for special educational purposes

One of our goals within this project is to redesign the bee-suit so that it will be more suitable and usable for the children (age 8-15)that we'd like to educate, here at Goldsmiths. What we would also like to do is to add some gadgets. Is it possible to let the suit interact with your I phone or the hive? What would this look like?

We bought an existing suit and figured out what we would like to change but for real good advice we've interviewed some beekeepers. The suit we had a look at is not a full suit but only the jacket.

Points we would like to redesign: