Today, if the weather is nice enough, I will visit the Crater of the moon and then Huka Honey Hive. It is going to be my last visit before I move on, hopefully.
I start the day with the visit of “crater of the moon”. I think the name is better than the place… I don’t know why but I will see it in 1.7km.
Aïe! I didn’t expect to pay for this kind of place… 6$, ok, that’s fair.
It’s not as impressive as Wai-O-Tapu but I started with the best so now it’s surely less surprising.
I’m heading to the lookout point.
50m more and I will arrive to the photo point 🙂
Wouhaaa! Heuuuu… mouai… OK
The mount on the left which is present in many pictures since I’m in Taupō is called Mt Tauhara (1088m). The sign shows also Mt Tongariro which the place I would like to go but it still too cold now.
Moving on to Huka Honey Hive
I’ve just arrived to Huka Honey Hive (Maps). There is a free exposition about bees and many products made obviously with honey.
The visit starts with the presentation of the equipment which makes total sens 🙂
Then, the bees 🙂 There is an installation with a tube between the glass box and the outside. The bees can work like everywhere else and show their work to families. And that’s it the visit is finish! the size of this exposition is 2m² haha. I understand why it’s free.
But there is also 2 panels with informations about bees like worker bees, the queen bee, nurse bees.
- A honeybee visit between 50 and 100 flowers during a single collection flight.
- The life span of a worker bee is 5 to 6 weeks.
- A worker bee makes about 1/2 teaspoon of honey during its life time.
- The honey bee is not born knowing how to make honey.
- Instead of feeding the larvae a pollen and nectar mixture, the future queen will be fed entirely with royal jelly, from this moment onwards and for the rest of her life. It is this food that makes her a queen bee instead of being a worker bee.
- it’s only the first queen that hatches that can become the queen of the hive. She will quickly go around to all other queen cells and sting to death the queen that has not yet hatched. If two hatch at the same time they will have a fight in witch only one will survive.
All the rest of the place is the shop.
Honey candles…
Raw honey…
Honey and more honey…
… different beauty, healthy products. But my favorite is …
… the honey ice cream! Mmmh! 🙂
Eh Damien, how make you to eat ice with cold weather! Know you, there is a “bee school” to Saint Raphaël. We have discovered the last Week-end. It’s a little house in country, with a lot of bee hives, but no bees! They must sleep for the winter perhaps, already! I looked at a film on bees disparition from world. Nobody know why they die. It’s very sad, et very dangerous for the earth.