Hello, friends.

My name is Brandy, and I'm here at the Hillary Clinton Children's Library.

Today, I'm going to show you our summer reading club, our garden, and we even have bees.

Let's go.

Hey, Ellen.

Hey, Brandy.

Brandy: What are you doing?

Well, just like every day at the library, we are getting ready for kids to come and visit us and enjoy our summer reading club.

Well, just by looking around, I can tell there's a lot more going on than just reading books.

Ellen: Absolutely.

We do have a lot of activities for kids and families to be a part of.

Magicians, musicians, even some puppet shows.

But at this library in particular, there's a lot going on besides just the programs and the libraries, a lot of different spaces that you may not see at other places.

In fact, I think Patrice is waiting for you in the garden.

OK, well, let's go find her.

Hello, Patrice.

What are you doing?

Patrice: Hey, Brandy.

I am picking cucumbers.

Oh, cool.

These ones just started.

Just yesterday, they were these tiny little cucumbers.

Like, see how small that is?

Brandy: Oh, wow.

Patrice: And now they're this big.

So we're going to pick some.

So, Patrice, we're at the library, and that's such a weird place to have a garden.

Actually, lots of libraries have gardens, and this is our teaching garden, and we do lots of programs out here for kids to come and find out where food grows.

Tell us your favorite thing about working in this beautiful garden.

Oh, the best thing is when kids and their families come through and you show them what's growing and get them to taste something they've never tried before.

We have another kind of cucumber growing.

Let's go see them.

So these are our dragon egg cucumbers.

And that's a funny name.

Does it look like a dragon egg?

I think so.

And we like to grow different kinds of vegetables because then kids can see that things aren't all one color.

Like in the grocery store, all the cucumbers are green, but these ones are almost white.

And I want to show you these flowers and the cucumbers.

And each of these flowers, all the females flowers turn into a little cucumber.

And if the bees and the other pollinators come and transfer the pollen between the flowers, then the fruit can grow.

So flowers and bees are so important in this garden.

Would you like to see some other flowers?

Brandy: Yes.

Patrice: OK, let's go.

These flowers are so beautiful.

Tell me about these.

These are some marigolds and cosmos, and these are camomile, like camomile tea.

And we've got sunflowers over here and zinnias behind us.

Why is it important to have flowers in a food garden?

Well, the flowers serve two purposes.

They attract pollinators like butterflies and bees.

And also, some of them, like these marigolds, have a strong smell and that keeps the bugs we don't like away from our vegetables.

So it lets us grow food without using pesticides.

So it's all healthy for us and healthy for the bees.

Yeah, we keep bees here.

Also, we have bees outside and then also inside in our observation hives.

Would you like to go take a look?

Brandy: Yes.

Wow.

Patrice, this is so cool.

Not only do we have a beehive, but we have solar panels.

Yeah, we keep our bees out here because it's very sunny.

That's good for their health.

These solar panels generate 30% of the power we need to run the library too.

So tell me a little bit more about the beehives we have.

These bees are pollinating our garden, and we get honey from them.

This is honey from our bees.

But the really cool thing is that we can go inside the library and look inside a hive in our observation hive.

Do you want to go see that?

Brandy: Yes.

Let's go.

Wow.

Patrice, this is so cool.

I've never seen anything like this in a library before.

Are these some of the same bees that we see in the garden?

Patrice: Yes.

These bees have a tube that goes outside the building, and they can come and go.

This is a great way to study bees.

It's not scary.

The bees are behind this glass, and you can spend lots and lots of time watching what they're doing.

Down here, this is capped brood inside.

There is a bee pupating, which is like how butterflies metamorphosize, bees also pupate.

Then we see these bees with their abdomens sticking out.

They are workers who are feeding larva.

They're feeding them pollen and honey nectar.

Up here we see honey.

They've got lots of capped honey up there.

That's their food for their babies.

One thing that we can say is that these bees are busy.

Well, friends, we had a really busy day here at the library.

And be sure to check out libraries in your community.

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