Summer Camps for Children

SBA Summer Camps will be under way the second week of June, 2016 with Stephen and Kaylee Powell. A maximum of eight students will be registered each week. Students will need to bring a sack lunch, sunscreen, insect repellent, clothing for warm, cool, and wet weather. Students will be engaged in hands-on educational activities including indoor and outdoor games. Snacks are provided twice each day with attention to allergies. Cost: $350.00 per student. All educational materials are included. To register email Stephen sciencebasedart@yahoo.com

June  13th - 17th: Botany, Bugs, & Birds (2nd - 6th grades)

Students will enjoy a full day of music, literature-based art, and explorations through math and science. Curiosity will abound as we bring the classroom into the outdoors.

June 20th - 24th: Wilderness Survival (5th-8th grades)

Topics will include:  Anticipate, prevent, and mitigate wilderness hazards. Learn and practice basic first-aid to address: hypothermia, heat reactions, frostbite, dehydration, blisters, insect stings/bites, and wild animals.   Memorize seven priorities of wilderness survival.  Create your own personal survival kit.  Learn what to do when you are lost. Discuss survival in the following conditions: Cold and snowy; Wet (forest); Hot and dry (desert); Windy (mountains or plains); Water (ocean, lake, or river).  Build natural shelters.  Learn three ways to treat water found in the outdoors to prepare it for drinking. Discover edible Alaskan plants.

June 27th - July 1st: Botany, Bugs, & Birds (2nd - 6th grades)
Students will enjoy a full day of music, literature-based art, and explorations through math and science. Curiosity will abound as we bring the classroom into the outdoors.

July 11th - July 15th: Creative Writing Photography (7-12th grades)

Junior and Senior High students will take photos to create art from their own photographs. This week will be full of photography tips and fine art.

July 18th - 22nd Backyard Science (4th - 8th grades)

Students will become expert junior scientists as they use the scientific method to explore and experiment with scientific phenomena.

July 25th - 29th Poetry Workshop (7-12 grades)

Students will create their own collection of famous poems, which they will illustrate. Students will also learn multiple poetry styles, and write and illustrate their own poems, incorporating figures of speech (alliteration, metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, and hyperbole).

August 1st - August 5th: Wilderness Survival (5th-8th grades) 

Topics will include:  Anticipate, prevent, and mitigate wilderness hazards. Learn and practice basic first-aid to address: hypothermia, heat reactions, frostbite, dehydration, blisters, insect stings/bites, and wild animals.   Memorize seven priorities of wilderness survival.  Create your own personal survival kit.  Learn what to do when you are lost. Discuss survival in the following conditions: Cold and snowy; Wet (forest); Hot and dry (desert); Windy (mountains or plains); Water (ocean, lake, or river).  Build natural shelters.  Learn three ways to treat water found in the outdoors to prepare it for drinking. Discover edible Alaskan plants.

August 8th - 12th: Animal Migration (4th-8th grades)

Students will study animal migration during various seasons around the world, discovering and illustrating animals and their migratory routes.

To register emailsciencebasedart@yahoo.com

Timelapse Of A Bee’s First 21 Days Of Life

http://pulptastic.com/this-mesmerizing-timelapse-of-a-bees-first-21-days-of-life-will-have-you-hypnotized/

Beginning and Intermediate Beekeeping with Dawn Cogan

Beginning and Intermediate Beekeeping with Dawn Cogan

Beekeeping Classes with Science-Based Art

Science-Based Art
Instructor: Dawn Cogan 
To register, email Dawn at sciencebasedart@yahoo.com or call Dawn at (907)460-6050.

Cost: $150 per family

Sat. 4/2/16 1-5 PM & Sun. 4/3/16 1-5 PM (4 hrs. each day for a total of 8 hrs.) Monroe Catholic School 
• What is beekeeping? How much honey will I get? How much will this all cost me?
• Equipment necessary to keep bees in Alaska
• Biology and races of honeybees
• Members of the hive and their duties
• Where can I get bee equipment? Should I get new, used or build my own?
• Getting equipment ready for arrival of bees.
• Insulation, feeding bees properly
• What to do when the bees arrive
• Is my queen marked? (queen marking tool)
• Management of honeybee colonies in Alaska, the beekeepers calendar
• Running 2-Queen Hives
• Swarming and how to prevent it
• Honeybee diseases
• Extracting your Alaska honey
• What to do at the end of the season/Wintering Over
• Storing your equipment
• Beeswax candle making

Email from Honeybee Supplier Steve Victors

Hello Beekeepers,
Donna and I are hoping that your winter has gone well so far this year.  It has been very mild here in Big Lake, and I suspect that the entire state has gotten off easier than we have in the past.  I have been getting quite a few calls lately asking when it will be time to order bees for the spring.   Well, the time is now here.  We have overhauled our website and we are ready to go.  We will be adding to our Education page this spring and placing a few videos on the site pretty soon.  We have a video that shows our packages being filled when Donna and I were down getting bees last year.  You will find it in the Education page and click on the Videos link on the right.

This year we experienced an increase in our base price on packages of bees that I suspect has been driven by competition for California packages in the commercial market.  Package bee suppliers in California are getting orders of 3 to 4 thousand packages at a time, and that puts a very real limit on the available supply driving prices up.  This year we saw an increase of our base price for a single queen package by $15, and a $4 increase in queen prices for extra queens.

Fortunately, we have lower prices on fuel, and transportation costs have decreased compared to last spring.  We have lowered our instate transportation fees because of this.

As always, we seek to bring you the highest quality packages that can be found at the most reasonable price.

We continue to use our long time supplier for both packages and queens because of the consistent high quality of his bees, queens, and care of the packages.

As we have done in the past, we will be making trips to accompany each shipment of bees from our supplier’s operation to the distribution points here in Alaska.  We will be using our custom built trailer specifically designed for transporting packages of bees for the portion of the trip from our supplier’s yard to airfreight terminals in Portland.

As always, queens are guaranteed to be alive, healthy, and fertile. Packages are imported with a certificate of health and personally guaranteed to be in good shape. 

This year we are adding a third type of bee available to our customers.  John (our supplier) used these bees in his operation in South Dakota, and he said that they gathered a good honey crop for him.  His new queens are of the Buckfast line with the breeding stock not directly related to the Buckfast queens found in Texas but coming from a different source.  John reports that they have a good temperament similar to his Italian bees. 

Information on the development of the Buckfast bee can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckfast_bee

Here is the long range climatic seasonal predictions for weather: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/two_class.php

Our price this year is $170 for a four pound package with a marked queen.

Extra queens in the package are $24 each. 

Transportation fees are now:

Fairbanks  $7.50/package

Copper River Basin  $7.50/package

Soldotna  $4.00/package

Soldotna to Homer $4.00/package

Online orders are now ready to go at www.Stevesbees.com

Looking forward to a great year,
Steve and Donna
892-6175

Beginning and Intermediate Beekeeping with Dawn Cogan

Beekeeping Classes with Science-Based Art

Science-Based Art
Instructor: Dawn Cogan 
To register, email Dawn at sciencebasedart@yahoo.com or call Dawn at (907)460-6050.

Cost: $150 per family

Sat. 2/27/16 1-5 PM & Sun. 2/28/16 1-5 PM (4 hrs. each day for a total of 8 hrs.) Monroe Catholic School 
• What is beekeeping? How much honey will I get? How much will this all cost me?
• Equipment necessary to keep bees in Alaska
• Biology and races of honeybees
• Members of the hive and their duties
• Where can I get bee equipment? Should I get new, used or build my own?
• Getting equipment ready for arrival of bees.
• Insulation, feeding bees properly
• What to do when the bees arrive
• Is my queen marked? (queen marking tool)
• Management of honeybee colonies in Alaska, the beekeepers calendar
• Running 2-Queen Hives
• Swarming and how to prevent it
• Honeybee diseases
• Extracting your Alaska honey
• What to do at the end of the season/Wintering Over
• Storing your equipment
• Beeswax candle making

Science-Based Art Classes Cancelled for 2015-2016

Since I have been hired by IDEA as a full-time contact teacher, I will not be teaching Science-Based Art classes this year. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. I will continue to be an active member of the homeschool community in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Matrimony & Caging Queens

Hi Folks, Since my daughter got married last week I have neglected to blog for several weeks.
I will be caging queens tomorrow (8-6-15) if weather allows. The window for caging queens is now through the middle of Aug. depending on when you want to extract honey. Remember, it takes 21 days for worker brood to hatch out and 24 days for drones so 21-24 days after you cage your queen your hive will have no more eggs, larva or pupa and extraction is much cleaner and easier.  This has been a much better season than 2014 thanks to warmer weather. Most honey is darker this season, which I contribute to a shortage of rain in early to mid-summer. This decreases the amount of nectar flowers can produce (such as fireweed). When I cage my queens, I put a cork back in the queen cage hole and stick a thin piece of duct tape over the cork to discourage any royal Houdini tricks. Then I hang the queen cage in the middle of the hive between two frames ensuring the screen is not facing the foundation. I want to keep my caged queen alive as long as possible so the workers won't try as hard to create another queen. The screen of the queen cage must be facing open space between the frames.

Now Accepting Students for Fall 2015

Science-Based Art is now accepting students for the 2015 -2016 school year! To save your child's space, email Dawn Cogan at sciencebasedart@yahoo.com. Your child's name, grade and class title will be necessary. Space is limited (8 students per class) and available on a first come, first serve basis. Click on class titles above to view syllabus information.

2015 Class Schedule:

Literature-Based Art & Writing (Mon. 10 am-12 pm) 1st -3rd grades
Soar through the Solar System (Mon. 2:30 - 4:30 pm) 3rd - 8th grades

Scientific Method (Tues. 10 am-12 pm)
Beginning/Intermediate Art (Tues. 3-5 pm)

Animal Kingdom (Wed. 10 am-12 pm)  2nd - 4th grades
Creative Essay Writing (Wed 1-3 pm) 4th - 8th grades
Marine Marvels (Wed. 3:30-5:30 pm) 2nd - 4th grades


Animal Kingdom (Thurs. 10 am-12 pm)  2nd - 4th grades
Marine Marvels (Thurs. 1-3 pm) 2nd - 4th grades