DECATUR Honeybees are smarter than people may realize.

They can do a dance to tell the others where they've found pollen. When the hive gets too populated, the queen takes a group and leaves to start a new colony, and the ones left behind know when their queen is gone and get busy choosing an egg to create into a new queen.

They also know when a person is afraid of them.

Chase Brown of Brown and Brown Farms in Warrensburg was the guest speaker at Millikin University's chemistry camp for high school students on Tuesday. The camp is a collaboration with the University of Illinois Extension and Richland Community College. It offers high school students hands-on research, lunches with food industry entrepreneurs like Brown, preparation for scholarship-ready science projects and a demonstration dinner to wind up the camp experience.

Brown has been a beekeeper, in addition to his other farm endeavors, for a few years.

MacArthur High School student Brian Spicer performs an experiment during the Millikin University High School Chemistry Camp at the Leighty-Tabor Science Center Tuesday.

I have an Amish friend who's had bees for years, Brown told the students. He said when he goes to the hive after a long day, when he's tired and stressed, he always gets stung. If he goes on a Saturday morning, with a cup of coffee, when he's relaxed, they never sting him.

Brown likes catching wild swarms of bees for his hives because they're already in search of a new hive and already acclimated to Illinois winters, he said. A swarm of bees on a table or tree is most likely a group with their queen looking for new quarters. Before they left the old hive, they gorged on honey, so they'll be mellow and unlikely to sting.

Do you want to get in a fight right after Thanksgiving dinner? Brown asked the students, who laughed at the idea.

Honeybees are endangered, and while scientists are studying the problem, the reasons are still not clear what is killing them off. Brown said he urges people not to spray or kill a swarm, but to call someone like him to come to get them.

We want to know what's killing them so we can stop doing it, he said.

Farming is not what it once was, he told the students, not even for a family farm like his. His grandfather farmed that land before him, and he farms it with his father now, but farming has become big business.

A tractors costs $600,000, and the plow attachment costs $80,000, he said. A bag of seed corn, which will plant 2 acres, is $200. The amount of money the Browns have to borrow to get the crop in is astronomical, he said, and if the weather or markets don't cooperate, it can create a real financial bind.

Times have been good in recent years, with a profit remaining after harvest, but one effect of that is a surplus crop, which means that there's less demand, and prices fall.

The Brown farm is diversified, with cattle and rabbits raised for market, alfalfa to feed their own animals and to sell, corn and soybeans as other Illinois farms have, wheat, hogs, the bees and chickens. Their animals are not given antibiotics unless they're sick and not sold to market until the antibiotics have left their systems, and their food is non-GMO, even though GMOs would make things simpler for them, because consumers prefer it.

Farmers do a little bit of everything, Brown said: He's an agronomist, a botanist, a chemist, though his degree from Illinois State University is in animal nutrition.

Meeting Brown was a lesson in practical application of chemistry and science in general, and students at the camp are also learning some food science, said Garrett Trimble, 17, who is home-schooled. One of the things they are working on is taffy.

We're seeing the effect of the different type of butter on the finished product, Trimble said. With unsalted butter, it takes much less time to cook it because the boiling point is different. He plans to major in chemistry in college but hasn't yet decided what career path to pursue.

Hannah Flickinger, 16, who is also home-schooled, has not yet taken a chemistry course, but it's an interest of hers and she thought the camp would be a good chance to work in a lab and get a head start.

It's a new thing I wanted to try because I'm taking dual-credit classes at Richland (Community College), so I'm taking chemistry next year, and I thought it would be a fun start for that, she said. Anesthesiology is what I'm interested in for a job right now, and there's a lot of chemistry in that.

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Chemistry camp bonds over food science - Herald & Review