Snakes, Bees, Butterflies, and Miniature Horses of Paradizoo

This blog is already the third part of a series.

For the first part of this blog - Paradizoo Part 1: Paradizoo’s Farm Animals

For the second part of this blog - Paradizoo Part 1: Paradizoo’s Gardens

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Exploring the 7 hectare theme farm is really tiring and the sun is really scorching hot! At the top of the theme farm, near the vegetable field is a gazebo. Hooray! We could finally rest. We are really hungry, our stomach’s are already angry. The gazebo seemed like a restaurant or a cafe, but there’s only water and juice and they’re pretty expensive. So I just bought a bottle of water of Yel.

We noticed plastic containers with little holes. Surprisingly,they contain snakes!! For any amount of donation, you could have your picture taken with the snakes. Of course we grabbed the oppurtunity! It’s not my first time to touch a snake. Back in Singapore I held a really large phython, but there’s many of us holding it for picture taking. This time I had the snake on my shoulders.

They even had a little snake for kids who want to try it out. But Yel didn’t want to put the snake in her shoulders, I think she was quite scared.

To those who have been to Paradizoo, you may be wondering what happened to the Infinity Pond of Positivism. It has no water now. They had to use the pond’s water to water the plants. The El Nino has dried up their source of  water.

Moving on, is the Eclectic Garden back down the farm.

Across the Eclectic Garden is the Honey Bee Farm.

These are European Honey Bees. In a colony, there is only one queen. The queen bee actually knows when she should lay the next queen bee. Here is the thrill, the new queen bee has to kill the old queen bee because there should only be one queen. But in the Honey Bee Farm, they destroy this cycle. The actually look for the old queen bee and then sell it. A queen bee costs 800 pesos.

Did you know that a honey bee could only produce 1/4 tsp of honey in its whole lifetime? So just imagine how many bees it takes to produce a bottle of honey.

This is what’s inside the boxes in the honey bee farm. See the resin? In Japan, they melt that and use it as a spray to wounds so its heals and dries up faster.

It seemed like the bees are captives inside the box. No, they have small holes where they can exit and enter. I was really afraid to take this picture for the fear that a bee might sting me.

Honeycombs are made by the worker bees *amazing*. In almost every two days, a honey bee’s role in a colony changes. During harvest season, which is approx. every 2nd week of April, the honeycombs will be full of honey. The honey is taken out with the help of centrifugal force.

The honeycomb is placed inside this machine and then the lever is turned.

1 honeycomb produces up to 4 kilos of honey. After the honey is taken from the honeycomb, it is directly placed into bottles thru the faucet at the bottom of the machine. The shelf life of honey is forever. We were even told that to this date, honey is dugged up in Egypt. Honey used to be an offering.

This is the bees wax used in cosmetics. When the honeycomb is melted, it turns into bess wax. Melting a honeycomb uses a special process. You can’t just put it in a pot and melt it. Before moving on, I bought a bottle of honey which costs 200 pesos.

Next to the Honey Bee Farm is the Butterfly Garden.

A butterfly needs two kinds of plants: the host plant and the food plant. For every kind of butterfly, there is a unique host plant. The butterfly lays its eggs only on its host plant.

 The food plant could be any flowering plant.

 Beside the Butterfly Garden is the PerPETual Park Cemetery.

Back to Paradizoo Grill which seemed to function like a lobby; we noticed the miniature horse backriding in the playground. A round of horsebackriding costs 30 pesos.

Yel enjoyed it so much!

It’s 1pm and we haven’t eaten yet. We’re really hungry!! Paradizoo seemed to have nothing to offer our angry stomachs. So I told hubby that we’ll eat lunch instead on our next destination, Residence Inn.

And so I thought that we’ll just go there some other time but…

Ticket to Paradizoo costs 199 pesos. Yel got in for free. And for an additional 50 pesos you get to go to Residence Inn which is just 10-15mins away. A separate ticket to Residence Inn also costs 199 pesos. It’s a good bargain so we decided to go there too since hubby really wants to see the lion there. And we were also told that we could give milk to a tiger cub. It would be a really great experience!

We waited for their shuttle, but it didn’t arrived in 30 mins. So we decided to commute instead because our tummys could wait no more.

On my next post, I will show you Residence Inn!