Joe Waggle -
  First, my thanks  for an extremely informative site, and videos to boot!  I recently moved my slide presentation to a laptop with a projector, in large measure because I wanted to achieve a goal of educationg children as to the difference between a honey bee and a yellow jacket.  The wealth of images
available on line is staggering, and suddenly I was freed from being linked to a much more limited slide collection (or haivng slides made from digital files, a laborious process at best).

Personally, I like to start with images of cave paintings of feral  bees and prehistoric man (Cave of the Spiders, caves from S. Africa and Central India), then one of the hieroglph from Luxor, Egypt, showing the workers tending to hives in clay tubes and using "smoke".  I ask children what they think that guy is doing with the "fuming bowl" and then say that "what he did 3,800 years ago, I did this very morning in order to bring bees in to show you"  I then light a smoker, which small kids find fascinating.  Make sure there are openable windows, check for the presence of a smoke detector, and in general light it just enought to get a few puffs off before shutting it down.

If you do ask a responsible adult for permission first, you are very likely to be denied, so I usually don't. If alert they are very risk averse, and I wouldn't blame them.  I have never set off a smoke detector. If there is a detector and the ceiling is low, better stay close to an outside door or window.


C.Crowell
Hightstown, NJ

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