We got an EXTRA late start today, but never fear we will be getting 6 am start the next two days and will have an excess of information to blog about. For today, I have two major events to report on; a bee farm visit and the reorganization of Morris’s refrigerator.

The bee farmer, who can be accurately described as a bee genius, gave us a tour of his beehives and all of the fun gear and gadgets that go along with it. We started at a hive that was queen-less, this left the bees wandering around confused with a lack of direction. They can be left without a queen awhile before going completely crazy in search of a new one. The queen was borrowed to put into a glass frame to show our class, without the fear of being stung. We spent a long while trying to locate the queen among the female worker bees and the drones (male bees). Bees are very systematic and intelligent, and so is bee keeping. We discussed swarming a lot. Swarming is when the bees leave their hive in a tornado-looking fashion and relocate in the form of a bunched ball. There are different reasons a beehive can choose to swarm, the most common is when they feel over crowed in their hive or there are too many drones beginning for form.

It was fascinating to uncover some connections between each of the smaller scale businesses we have seen over the last couple of days. They are all risking the certainty of a profit by entering markets that are less common in Iowa. Beekeeping, chestnut raising, and local cattle raising are not things that everyone is practicing here. The brave and adventurous ones all seem to want to go against the norm for some reason, whether it is religion, politics, or a respect and love for wildlife. They have also all found hardships regarding raising these uncommon crops in an environment dominated by corn and soy. A few years back, Mark (the bee genius) had a large portion of his bees die as a result of a neighboring farm spraying pesticides that killed his bees. He was able to meet an agreement to protect his bees, however, it was almost devastating to part of his livelihood.

One thing that holds true for everyone that we have met so far, there is some serious passion in Iowa. I have never experienced a group of people more willing to talk about what they do with such excitement and pride.

During the afternoon, the boys on the trip went to see Denny’s tractors. While they were gone, the girls stayed back to catch up on some reading and blog posting (it was not meant to be spilt by gender that is just how it worked out). During this downtime, I reorganized the two refrigerators required to feed our group of 10 people that have been eating at Morris’s. It was a large task to undertake but the results will hopefully decrease the stress level at mealtime for our chefs. It was therapeutic.