My boys(5 and 8) love coming out to help with the hives. I've caught them popping the top on hives so they can look inside without me. They quickly learned to help the bees clean up the honey when it gets scratched open, next to the "I spotted the queen first" game it's their favorite thing to do.
Each of them started their own hives this year from frames I pulled from my best hives and are excited to extract, sample, and sell their very own honey.
It has been a great learning experience for them to watch the different phases of hive development from making their own queen to starting to cap honey. Five frame mediums aren't the best housing for bees, but they are small enough they can do most of the work themselves which makes the risk worth it. The hives are as tall as they can reach and they started talking yesterday about splitting them so they each has two. They're pretty excited about having Thousands of bees working for them. :-D
They're their generations scientists, and developing young bee keepers. At 5 and 8 they can already graft, checkerboard, do mite counts and tell you why they need to. They recognize when something is amiss with a hive even if they're not yet sure what it is.
They can rate a queen's pattern and have advised me on why I should replace certain queens they think are poor....usually ones I just haven't gotten to yet.
You will be amazed how quickly your girls will learn beekeeping skills.
Enjoy sharing the adventure.