Bees and Buses

Last weekend our friend was visiting and we went to the Philadelphia Honey Festival! Apparently it's put on every year by the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild (also, apparently there's a Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild!). We learned lots about bees, beekeeping, and how to get honey out of honeycomb (hint: centrifuges). We got to try some honey still in the comb, and we saw a bee bearding. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like:

Photo credit: Quinn!

The beekeeper strapped a queen bee to his chin, said "this is the cool kids' version of the ice bucket challenge," and then just dumped a ton of bees out of a box and onto himself. He also told us that 5,000 bees weigh just one pound. AND while he was sitting there a little kid asked him what you call a newborn bee, he started to explain all about grubs and larva and insect development stages, and the little kid said "no, a bayBEE" and laughed hysterically. Awesome.

This weekend Ben finally delivered on his Christmas present to me (does it still count as his Christmas present if it's nine months late?), and we did one of those double decker bus tours around Philadelphia. I LOVE both double decker buses and Philadelphia, so it was a great combination. We even got there early enough to have the front seats on the top level of the bus.

Bus selfie!

We learned lots of fun facts about Philadelphia history - including that, contrary to popular belief, Pennsylvania isn't named after William Penn. It's actually named after his father: William Penn.

Lastly, the bus tour started in the historical, super-touristy part of Philly, and we saw this sign for a food court: