Bee School this Saturday ... Allen County, Kentucky

Saturday will be the 2014 Allen County Beekeepers Association Bee School.  Dr. Tammy Horn from Berea is the guest speaker and the sessions start at 9:00 AM at the AC-S HS.





http://www.allenkybees.com/


Beekeeping School

Hosted by the Allen County Beekeepers Association

Saturday February 1, 2014

Allen County - Scottsville High School
1545 Bowling Green Road
Scottsville Kentucky 42164

Registration begins @ 7:30 A.M.
Sessions begin @ 9:00 A.M
Adjourn approx. 3:30 P.M.

No pre-registration required!

$10.00 per individual
$15.00 per family
$20.00 per youth group

Sessions will cover a variety of beekeeping topics for every level of beekeeping experience. There will be a beginner's tract of classes designed for the beginning beekeeper with little or no experience.

                                       Sessions Offered:    Swarming; Causes and Cures
                                                                        Natural Beekeeping
                                                                        Producing Comb Honey
                                                                        Basic Queen Rearing
                                                                        Marketing Honey & Bee Hive Products
                                                                        Alternative Hive Products
                                                                        Supplemental Feeding of Honey Bees
                                                                        Honey Bee Pests, Diseases, & Treatments
                                                                        Planting Flora for Honeybees
                                                                        Open Question and Answer Forum

                                      Beginner Sessions:   Bee Biology (Basic Beekeeping)
                                                                        Beekeeping Equipment, Hardware, & Assembly
                                                                        Installing Package Bees
                                                                        Harvesting Honey

Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Tammy Horn, President of the Eastern Apicultural Society and the Kentucky State Beekeepers Association.  Other notable speakers include, Sean Burgess, Kentucky State Apiarist, and Kent Williams, EAS Master Beekeeper.


Beekeeping supply vendors will be set up throughout the day for you to purchase beekeeping equipment and supplies.  Free delivery is offered to bee school participants on orders called into either Walter T. Kelley Co. (1-800-233-2899) or Dadant Beekeeping Supplies (Frankfort, Ky. branch / 1-888-932-3268).  Orders must be called in at least 1 week prior to the bee school and picked up on site, Feb. 1, 2014.

Lunch costs are NOT included in the registration fee.  There will be a BBQ vendor in the cafeteria with sandwich offerings to purchase. Or, you may choose to visit one of the several nearby restaurants in Scottsville.

Join us for a educational and fun day, filled with nothing but bees and beekeepers!
Families AND children are encouraged to attend.

Space Trucks, Excel and -2 F

Another cold stretch with -2 degrees this morning.  A warm up later this week to the 40s.  I hope to feed our bees this weekend.

Today in Selected Topics, we finished our deep space vehicles and will build a solar system model on Friday.  We will wrap up our Astronomy unit next week.  Also today, several students helped with the Patriot Pollinator Project by removing milkweed seeds from pods collected last fall.  We will put these seeds in the refrigerator for a month before planting them.  We did have a little problem with floss escaping in the hallway outside my room.

Tomorrow in AP Biology, we will finish our mathematical modeling lab using Microsoft Excel to simulation situations in population genetics.  Tuesday, we built a model that will randomly select alleles in a small population.  Tomorrow we will use our models to explore the five conditions of Hardy - Weinberg equalibrium.

Saturday will be the 2014 Allen County Beekeepers Association Bee School.  Dr. Tammy Horn from Berea is the guest speaker and the event starts at 9:00 AM at the AC-S HS.

More Snow Days and Back to School ... again!

After missing three days of school last week, we got back to school for a teacher's only day on Thursday  Students came on Friday (3 degrees below zero when I left the house)  We have now missed 10 days of school and will be making them up as we go through second semester and into the summer. The good news with this cold weather is that we may not have the tick population we had last summer ... bad news, hope the honeybees make it through.

On Friday my Selected Topics classes met and we studied five winter constellations, reviewed star life cycle and worked on our deep space vehicles.  Monday will be another Selected Topics day.

In eighth period computer science we finished our power point presentations on historically important people in computer science / programming.  Sudents will present these to the class on Monday.

A couple of pictures from our Electromagnet Lab ...

Another Snow Day ... with snow this time!

We have another snow day today with about an inch on the ground but 8 degrees F this morning ... it was a party at the birdfeeders early this morning ...  This makes 8 snow days this year so we will be doing some serious make up in the spring and probably into summer vacation.  Of course this will not help our AP courses that start testing in early May and cannot be moved back.

Headed out for a walk this morning to see the animal tracks.  Will go to the hospital later to relieve Sue Neal.

We will push everything back in AP Biology.  If we are at school tomorrow, we will start our population genetics mathematical modeling lab using and Excel spreadsheet.

Selected Topics Friday will be in Astronomy ... 5 constellations you should know and we will work on our space truck for deep space travel.

Computer programming will start back up on single and two dimensional arrays and sorting.

MLK Day and more ...

Martin Luther King Day today.  Years ago, I remember when we debated as a faculty whether to take this day off from school.  One argument was to be in school where you could do some activities to honor Dr. King and his legacy.  I was on the side to honor Dr. King and the civil rights movement by making it a holiday.  In our community, I thought it was more important to honor the day and make it important publicly. In any case, that struggle still exists on many levels and for many people.  A couple of MLK quotes.  The first for those lovers of captialism and career climbing ... the second is for me to live by this coming year.


"Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’"

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

We missed school on Friday because of ice and a little snow.  Last Thursday in AP Biology, we finished the Diffusion and Osmosis Lab in AP Biology.  Tomorrow, we begin a mathematical modeling lab on population genetics using an Excel spreadsheet.  It is one of the required investigations and one of the entirely new labs from last year's overhaul of the AP Biology curriculum.

My 5th period computer programming class will continue our unit on arrays and sorting tomorrow with another sample problem.  We did a simple single dimension array as an example last Thursday.

Sunny this morning, pouring honey into bottles later, moving the Christmas tree downstairs (been at the hospital with Granny), putting more seeds in the freezer for stratification and going to get outside for a walk.  Lots of doves and finches at the bird feeders this morning, flickers working the yard. A few juncos scattered among the finches.

Electromagnets and raspberry pi ...

Today was a Wednesday/Friday day in our block schedule
.  In Selected Topics today we went over facts and features of batteries.  We finished our electromagnet competition and then students generated their own lab.  Most students tested different brands of batteries or tested Faraday's law.

Eighth period computer programming worked on graphics problems, their powerpoint projects on computer science pioneers and our raspberry pi project.  Today was our first day to work on our raspberry pi computers ... we will be working up some projects in the months to come.

During the polar vortex, we had dozens of goldfinches (below) and a few juncos (not pictured) at our feeders ...

Electromagnets and computer programming ...

Today makes two days of school in a row.  It was a Selected Topics day and we constructed electromagnets using a D battery, a nail and copper wire.  We had a competition to see who could pick up the most paperclips with their magnets and studied Faraday's Law.  We will wrap this lab up on Monday with a student generated experiment.

In Computer Programming, we are finishing up our graphics problems.  Four students had me check their programs.  After this project, we will be making powerpoint presentations over selected computer science pioneers.

We finished the day with the FLEX period.

Monday will be a Blue Day ... Selected Topics will meet as will my 8th period Computer Programming class.

Back to school tomorrow, again ...

After returning to school on Thursday last week, we were out of school for four days with extremely cold temperatures, snow and ice ... the polar vortex!  Global warming leads to changing weather patterns ... changing jet streams ... a wobbling polar vortex.  Next issue on the horizon, a predicted El Nino might make 2014 the warmest in centuries.

http://science.time.com/2014/01/06/climate-change-driving-cold-weather/

Last Thursday, we worked on our behavior lab using fruit flies (Drosophila).   Students tested fly preferences to different substances and fruits.  We will collate and analyze data tomorrow.   Also tomorrow, speciation / Chapter 24.

Students transfering flies from their culturing tubes to their experimental apparatus ... but, not in our classroom.

The "Brain Trust" running their experiement below ...