This year for our Summer Bucket List I am hoping to take advantage of those places around us that just beg to be explored. We live in Charleston, SC, a pretty touristy area with tons of fun things to do. But I find that we don’t take advantage of that enough.
Since having our little girl, and becoming involved in kid life, I had heard/read about a place called Bee City. It’s about an hour outside of Charleston near a little town called Cottageville. I imagined tons of hives with bees a buzzing, but upon further investigation (check out the Bee City website) discovered that they have quite the little petting zoo and classroom space for learning all you can about bees. I thought I had read it somewhere on the site (but can’t find it now) that they had had numerous hives at one point, but only have an enclosed wall of bees for folks to observe. For safety reasons, I’m sure.
So grab a cup of joe and kick back, this is going to be one of my more photo heavy posts. There was just so much fun stuff there, it was hard to keep the photos to a minimum!
Welcome to Bee City!
Yup, grumpy face…that pretty much summed up the day. But you can’t say we didn’t try to have fun!
Upon paying to enter, you get two cups of food for the critters. One for the moneys and lemurs, and one for the deer, goats and llamas…I love llamas 
The first monkey we came upon was a naughty one. We put the treat in his cup and used the pulley to slide it to him. Well, the little furry booger was quicker than my girl and her finger rolled up into the pulley causing quite the boo boo…I guess that really set the grumpy tone! But moving on…
The lemurs were awesome! There little fingers felt like velvet, our girl loved feeding these guys!
Next we wandered through an area that housed an assortment of pheasants and peacocks. The last one in this bunch was quite the chatter box, carrying on a cooing conversation with our girl.
When we arrived a man told us Bee City now has two miniature cows in there collection. They looked like mini brahmas. And apparently have a prehistoric ancestry, who knew?!
Next were the jokesters, the goats. I really get a kick out of watching goats, there were babies that were just too cute! As we were feeding them, there were too adults head butting each other to get to us for a snack…as if they were starving, you know?
I’ve always thought llamas were cool. Now I know for sure that I love them…maybe one day I would like to have one. My man on the other hand thinks I’m bonkers! But can’t a girl dream? They all look a little naked as they had recently been shaved. They were pretty entertaining all on their own!
Yup, even daddy fed one! He said he swore that one was plotting world domination
This one was my favorite!
I’m not sure how well you can see it, but this guy definitely could use some dental work! Holy under bite, Batman!
Wandering on there was a nature center where they house an interesting collection of reptiles, amphibian and fish. The volunteer that was working in there had tons of information and was happy to answer any and all questions.
Biggest toad ever! Like bigger than your face big. I’m just glad it didn’t decide to jump!
In a nut shell, snakes bug me out…even if there is some mighty thick glass separating us! Rattlesnakes, EEKK!
Look! We got one smile out of her
She even got a high five from this little alligator!
(Pardon the blur, I just wasn’t prepared for that one!)
Outside the nature center is a little children’s garden where they can pump their own water to water the plants. And even pump water to come out of the massive watering can!
The people running this place have quite the sense of humor. There were silly little boxes, signs and saying all over the grounds…
Rare white bees?
Hehehe, snort!
As I mentioned, Bee City doesn’t have hives that can really be accessed, other than the one open viewing window in their class room. But they do have a cute little “village” set up in the middle of the petting zoo.
On our way over to the classroom the check out the bees we also passed some pigs, miniature horses, pigeons and a beautiful koi pond. Of which I have tons of pictures, but I’ll spare you…this time!
I would imagine that siting in on a presentation about the life of bees would be pretty cool. How they build their hives, make wax and honey. And how the honey is collected would be cool to learn about too. I guess since it was the weekend, there wasn’t really anyone around to give out much info. But there was a fair amount of signage that gave us some information.
You could actually see the wax on the bees legs in this enclosure. We never did find the queen. Her workers had her well hidden!
If you can see the tube in the bottom right of the picture below, it runs along the wall into a triangular glass tube that goes outside. That is how the bees move in and out. You could watch them fly off through the window looking out the back of the building.
That’s an awful lot of work for such a small amount of honey!
Thank you, bees!!
We could hear the bees buzzing…
And of course Bee City has a gift shop. You could buy as big or small a container of the sweet stuff as you can handle. They also had candles and soaps made from bees wax. Fun stuff!
All grumpiness aside, I think we all had a great time. If you asked my girl what her favorite part was, I’m sure she’d tell you feeding the lemurs! I of course, loved the llamas
That’s one fun thing marked off our Summer Bucket List! And if you don’t know by now about the Summer Bucket List Challenge sponsored by The Happy Family Movement, take your little tushie on over there and sign up! You’re sure to be inspired to get out and have tons of fun this summer!
How is your summer going so far?
Anna-Leigh
