BEES AND POLLINATIONS

I last checked the Rabun hives two weeks ago. At that time there was an egg in every cell in the first hive, the 8 frame one. Today I saw no eggs at all, no brood, nothing. There was capped brood (probably from the brood I saw two weeks ago), but no new eggs. There wasn’t a queenless roar and the bees were peaceful.

They were storing gorgeous honey: darker than the honey I’m seeing in Atlanta, but not raising bees.

So I took out a frame, covered the open hive with a drape and opened hive #2 in the hopes of getting a frame of brood and eggs to bring to Hive One. It never hurts a hive to add a frame of brood and eggs. Here are the possibilities:

1. Maybe I killed the queen in the last inspection (horrors!)
2. Maybe they didn’t like the queen, raised a new one and got rid of the old one, but there hasn’t been enough time for her to get mated and start laying yet.
3. Maybe for some bee reason that I can’t fathom, the queen is taking a break from laying but is in the hive.

No matter which of those is true, or even if the scenario is completely different, adding a frame of brood and eggs does no harm. If there is a queen, the bees will use the frame to keep their population going. If there isn’t a queen, the bees will use one of the eggs to make a new queen. If there isn’t a queen and one is in process, the pheromone from the new brood added today will help stave off any laying workers.

So I went to Hive Two (they need names, don’t they?) and stole a frame of brood and eggs and put it in Hive One and left with crossed fingers.

The sourwood flow should start soon, so even though neither hive needs it, I will leave an extra box on each hive on Monday when I go home to Atlanta.

Maybe since the hives are in Rabun County, I’ll call them Warwoman and Tallulah for wild areas in the county.  So the 8 frame is Warwoman and the 10 frame is Tallulah.  That will help me write more distinctly about each of them!

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The Danville, Virginia, swarm that I caught a little over a week ago is doing really well.  I admit that I was a little worried after this catch. After all, in just one day they landed on a stake, then I placed them in a cardboard nuc, moved them to North Carolina at night, then kept them in my storage building overnight.  The first thing on my mind when I woke up the next day was getting those bees in a permanent hive - then pray they would stay put.

As soon as it warmed up some (and I had a couple of cups of coffee), I got everything ready.  That included putting the feeder on the front and getting the frames inside the hive so the bees could start building their new home.  I added some clean „used” frames (ones that came from a previous colony which had been scraped clean) along with brand new frames sprayed with sugar syrup.  With everything set up, all I would have to do now would be to move the frames out of the cardboard nuc to the new blue hive.

Here are the bees after I added them to the hive.  The white, plastic frames are the ones that were inside the cardboard nuc.  When I opened the nuc to remove the frames, the bees were extremely calm and very few of them flew around.  Unfortunately I didn’t see a queen, but based on their very calm demeanor, I believe the queen was in residence anyway.  As soon as I got the bees settled into the new hive, I started to shut everything up.

Here you see the new colony as they get their bearings.  Once I got the inner cover on the hive, the girls started peeking out.  While this was probably a good sign, I was also a little apprehensive that they could still be in swarm mode.  So I hurried to get everything shut up so they could settle down.  I put the hive top on and covered it with a paving stone to weigh it down so the wind won’t blow it off in a storm.  Oh, and I kept my fingers crossed all day that they would stay put! 

I went back about a half-hour later and found that the girls were already flying some.  And oddly enough, they ventured out and took to the air faster than the colony I bought from Dadant.  Before I left for work later in the afternoon, I noticed that air bubbles were rising in the feeder bottle every few minutes, so I knew they were taking the sugar syrup.  And now, a little over a week later, they’re taking one bottle of sugar syrup per day.

With the addition of the Danville bees, I now have four colonies in my back yard apiary.  The Danville bees occupy the blue hive, the package from Dadant is in the yellow hive, and the green and orange hives are last year’s stock.  But there may be some news as far as the green and orange hives.  With spring came the abundance of swarm cells in both hives, and I can’t find my marked queens from 2010.  I saw a new queen in the orange hive weeks ago, and now I’m finding frame after frame of eggs, larvae and capped brood.  The green hive may be in trouble, but I’m working with them and hope to have good news soon.  More on those hives later!

Once again I would like to thank the Jacob, Barbara and Kimberly Hairston of Danville for helping to save another colony of bees!  Good job!

Bee vigilent everybody!

(więcej…)

Stonehurst Place:  Stopped there on Tuesday (one week from my last visit).  The bees were busily flying in and out but they had not drawn or used the frames in the top box on either hive.  Despite the way my bees are flying, the nectar flow must be slowing somewhat.

Home:  Also checked on Tuesday.  Colony Square had drawn and filled two of the 8 frames in the top box and was just looking at the rest of the frames in that box.  Lenox Pointe had drawn none of the frames in its top box. The swarm hive had not drawn any (they had been in the hive for three days at this point), so I made some sugar syrup and fed them inside the hive.

By yesterday, that baggie looked like this:

So today it was empty and so I replaced it with a full bag.

I opened up the swarm hive and the queen is laying.  I was relieved to see eggs.  I am so glad that the queen is there, but they have very little comb drawn – just about four frames in the top box and are not using the bottom box at all.

Next week I’ll switch the box positions.

Blue Heron:  We had terrible weather in Atlanta last night so I didn’t check on the Blue Heron this week.  The hive combination should have taken by now and the queen should have been raised.  (We combined the hives and gave them resources to make a queen on May 8).  However, we won’t open that hive until June 19 when the next hive inspection is scheduled.  That way the queen has time to get out, get mated, and begin laying.

Rabun:  I’m going up to the mountains tomorrow and will check on the hives there.  It’s about to be sourwood season, so I’ll make sure they have honey supers ready for honey storage.

Topsy and  Linda T’s Bees in South Georgia:  Haven’t been to either in a while, but will go check on Topsy on Monday and will go to South Georgia in the next couple of weekends.  Greg is down there looking over the situation this weekend so I’m not too worried about them.

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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping, by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer, available on Amazon. Anyone read it? The review on Amazon is worryingly worthy

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1615640118/ref=pe_98741_25196441_snp_dp

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So, I was going to write a really important post tonight.  It was going to deal with philosophy of science, and it was going to be a shoe-in for Open Lab 2011.  It was gonna make you question how you thought about Life, The Universe, And Everything.

And then Google Labs released a new tool.

And I was all, “WOO SHINY NEW TOY!”

And.

Yeah.

That was how I found out about ultimate frisbee and insects.

“Google Correlate is an experimental new tool on Google Labs which enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide (e.g., a data set of event counts over time) or a query that you enter.”

Basically, Google takes a search term that you enter (“insects”) and examines search patterns for other search terms in its database to calculate a correlation coefficient (r).  It’s an extension of Google Trends; it’s looking to see which search terms trend together.

In case you barely remember that statistics class from your misspent youth, the correlation coefficient is a value between -1 and +1.  The closer to ±1 the r value is, the more closely correlated the patterns are.  The closer the value to zero, the less the two patterns are related.

Of course, we’ve all heard the “correlation is not causation” trope a million times. It’s especially true here; when you don’t even have a hypothesis about a relationship, the data points are just amusing.

So for your amusement and edification:

In addition to frisbee, “insects” is also strongly correlated with the search terms “snake photo” and “lizards”.

“Insect” (non-plural) is most strongly correlated with “aluminum siding,” “dunking booth,” and “frisbee” (non-ultimate).

“Ants” is most strongly correlated with “string trimmer.”
“Bees” is most strongly correlated with “Tool Rental.”  ”Honey Bee” is correlated with “raptor cam“.
“Roaches” is most strongly correlated with “warts,” as well as “5 year anniversary.”

“Lice” is strongly correlated with “dragon fruit“, but also “literacy stations” and “cheer routine.”  In fact, several cheerleading terms show up in the correlation list for “lice.”  ”Head Lice” is strongly correlated with “tackle football“, and “Nits“are correlated with “cheerleading bows“, so perhaps football season mirrors lice season?

And, of course, you know I had to go there.

“Crab Lice” is most strongly correlated with….”Lighthouses“?

“Pubic Lice” is most strongly correlated with….a host of civil war search terms.

I am frankly rather baffled about why these search terms should be seasonally correlated, unless Civil War Re-enactors are taking things a little too seriously in their search for authenticity.

Give it a spin–what fun correlations can you discover?

Filed under: Entomology, Insects, Random, Science Tagged: correlation, google, google correlate
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I did a „24 hour mite drop” on Bee Glad… and found 5 mites on the sticky sheet placed below the screen bottom board. I will monitor this hive carefully in the next few weeks and continue to remove capped drone brood when able.

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At the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, there’s usually a shrimp boil on Friday night for all the participants. At that dinner, the certificates are handed out for people who passed their Journeyman certification or their Master Beekeeper.  Welsh honey judge certification is also awarded that night and the winners of the honey contest are announced.

It’s a fun gathering and a casual time to talk to other beekeepers. Cindy Hodges took this photo of Noah, me, Julia and Allen Facemire, a fantastic film-maker who is also a beekeeper,. Allen has made movies of hive inspections and honey harvests for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association.

It’s a rare moment to see a photo of Noah, Julia and me not in bee garb so I thought I’d post a picture of how we look in real life, not at the Blue Heron all suited up for bees.

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via vimeo.com
More information about how this was filmed are on the original Vimeo page. Posted via email from a leaf warbler’s gleanings

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Through a crazy set of random clicks–which is how the internet works, really–I discovered a new piece of buggy pop culture: The Zanti Misfits.  It’s an episode from the first season of The Outer Limits (1963), and it starts with this voice over:

“Throughout history, compassionate minds have pondered the dark and disturbing question: what is society to do with those members who are a threat to society, those malcontents and misfits whose behavior undermines and destroys the foundations of civilization? Different ages have found different answers. Misfits have been burned, branded and banished. Today, on this planet Earth, the criminal is incarcerated in humane institutions…..or he is executed. Other planets use other methods. This is the story of how the perfectionist rulers of the planet Zanti attempted to solve the problem of the Zanti misfits.”

So, basically, they export their criminals on a prison ship to Earth. They demand that humans accept their criminals, or retaliation will be swift and violent.  ”Total destruction to anyone who invades our privacy.”

And the “misfits” are…a really freaky insect/human hybrid.  And I mean FREAKY.  Also, curiously, many of them seem to have hipster soul patches and mutton chop sideburns.

We don’t get a look at them until about 23 minutes into the episode, when a bank robber (Bruce Dern!) blunders into the top secret area of the Zanti landing.   He does not come to a good end. In fact, in a really wonderful touch, the human criminal ends up dead on his back with legs curled up like a roach.

The firefight at the end (starts around minute 43) is a truly wonderful mess; it… just has to be seen to be believed.

The ending has a wonderful twist, which I will leave out here; it’s a bit of a morality play on crime and punishment.

You can read a detailed excerpt about this episode from the Outer Limits Companion here; scroll to the bottom for scans of the pages.

I’m not sure how I didn’t know about this; so I thought I would share!

Watch it on Hulu

Watch it on YouTube

Filed under: Entomology, Insects, Movies Tagged: freaky, Outer limits, television, zanti misfits
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