BEES AND POLLINATIONS

–Richard

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In Atlanta we had a sudden drop in temperature from the highs 60s to the 20s where the temperature has remained for several days.  When it’s cold like this, we only have highs in the 30s at best.  When this goes on for several days, the bees are in real danger.

The warmish weather fools the bees into acting like it is spring and they go out, forge for pollen, raise brood, etc.  Then suddenly we have this kind of cold snap.  

The whole hive can die, if the cluster isn’t located where there is stored honey.

So I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I have one dead hive in my back yard.  I looked through it the other day when I did my first powdered sugar shake.  There is honey in the hive and dead bees scattered through the frames.  I didn’t take the bottom box off (too big a hurry to get back to the office), but I’ll let you know what I find when I do.

My current theory is that the hive went queenless before winter and I didn’t recognize that this had happened so I could combine it with another hive.  I may find something else when I look further and then we’ll know more, but for now, I’d speculate that the hive died naturally because there was no queen.

In the photo above you can see the few dead bee bodies on top of the frames.  I’ll look at these for signs of varroa or deformed wing when I get back into the hive.

For now, I put it back together until I have time in the next few days really to study it.

There was a rapid feeder on top of the hive still half filled with bee tea with a number of dead ants floating in the tea.  I strained it into a jar and may put that on another hive if I don’t find evidence of foul brood when I study the cells in the dead hive.

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How about this for some serious beekeeping: http://fatihmazrek.blogspot.com/

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–Richard

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I’m good at spilling things. I like wine glasses without stems for that reason. If something can be spilled, I’m your woman…..I can do it in a heartbeat.

Today I went over to Stonehurst Place to check on the bees. According to the research at UGA, if you want to treat the bees for varroa mites with powdered sugar shakes, then you start in January, treat four times, three days apart and then repeat the process every other month.

 So it’s January and time to get started.

Today I treated my hives at home and then got in the car to take the Dustructor to the Stonehurst Place Inn to treat the hives there. When I opened the back door of the car to get the Dustructor, the cap came off of the canister and powdered sugar went everywhere.

There was powdered sugar in every crevice near the door of the car. What a mess!

I gathered up what I could and returned it to the canister.

The good news is that on this day with 69 degree temps around noon, the bees were flying with enthusiasm out of both hives. I am relieved that they are alive and have high hopes for their making it through to March.

On each hive, as I had done at home, I slid the end of the Dustructor into the entry to about the middle of the hive. Then I gave five large puffs of powdered sugar into the hive with as much vigor as I could muster.

Down with the Varroa Destructor! Long live my bees!

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As people know I am a beekeeper, the more and more bees figure into gifts that are given to me and that I choose to give others.  This year was no exception.

I bought a set up honeybee pjs for my 2 year old granddaughter:

Someone brought these bee slippers from Amazon.com to our Metro Atlanta holiday party and I just had to have a pair for myself, so I went home and ordered them:

Of course there are bee mugs and honey dippers:

And I was given a luggage tag (I had one already but my dog ate it – REALLY…..) so I was thrilled to get another!  And a lovely mug for tea, and a cannister…I bought the bee bottle brush on a whim – I’m sure I’ll never use it but it’s such fun.

And my daughter and son-in-law gave me a funny t-shirt with a bear on it wearing fake bee wings.  The bear on the shirt is looking at the bee and says:  ”Honey?”  I tried to take a picture of me in the shirt in the mirror and it came out reversed, of course, and I can’t redo it, but will later and will add it to this collection.

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It is passing strange to think that growing your own food in your own garden can be considered a subversive act! How did we come to this state, especially in the developed world, but also many cities…

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You might have noticed a lot of news lately about robot designs based on insects.  Insects are great models for robots because bugs have an extremely stable and efficient model of locomotion: the tripod gait.  At any time, roaches have 3 feet on the ground–even when they’re running.   This tripod structure makes insects extra-resistant to tripping or tipping over.

Biomimetics is the fancy name for engineering systems that copy principles found in nature. Basing robots that need to scamper over rough terrain on an insect model that’s successfully lasted millions of years makes a lot of sense. But just how, exactly, do insects keep all those legs going in the right direction?  How can they respond so quickly to an approaching rolled-up newspaper?  How do insects manage this advanced scuttling with such a tiny brain?  And how can insects keep running even after their head is removed?

(Yes, insects can live for quite a while without a head. They eventually die from dehydration or starvation because they can’t drink or eat anymore, but remain able to run away and respond to environmental stimuli. It’s really quite disturbing.)

In order to build a biomimetic robot, one has to first understand the mechanics at work in insects.  The engineering explanation for insect locomotion is hidden in equations about viscoelastic spring mass oscillation and tiny insect-mounted cannons.

Yes.

ROACHES WITH JETPACKS.

This is not a photoshopped picture; it’s from a 2002 research paper in which researchers attempted to mathematically work out the principles of roach locomotion. You can see the jet-pack at work in this movie:

So. Um, WHY did they put jetpacks on roaches? Aside from it just being a totally freakin’ COOL thing to do?

Remember I mentioned how stable the tripod gait is?   The researchers suspected that the roach wasn’t using just its brain to keep itself balanced and running.  They created a mathematical model of a roach with legs that were springs.

Just the mechanical properties of springy legs were able to explain how a roach kept on track and at full speed, despite obstacles.  They called these “preflexive” mechanisms, to indicate that the exoskeleton and muscles stabilize roaches without involvement of the nervous system.

They had an explanation on paper, with a lot of big words and calculations of lateral velocity.  The next step was to test their lovely model by poking a roach while it was running.   That…was about as difficult to do as you might imagine, based on your experience chasing roaches around your kitchen.

The researchers needed to have a precisely measured force disturbing the roaches, so that they could plug it into their model and see if it was accurate.  Hence, a tiny exploding cannon mounted on a roach. Or, to give it the gizmo it’s proper name, the rapid impulsive perturbation (RIP) device.  (That name is doubly clever, since they were experimenting with the death’s head cockroach, Blaberus discoidalis.)

They calculated the lateral force generated by the RIP explosion was equal to 85% of the insect’s forward motion.  If you were jogging along, and I ran into you with a force that was 85% of your forward momentum, I don’t think either of us would be standing up.  (Ok, yes, there’s mass involved in this too, but just work with me here.)  The roaches hardly even break stride.   In fact, it took just 13 miliseconds for a roach to begin to respond to the explosion and get back on track.  The roaches completely recovered from that RIP explosion within 31 miliseconds. 

Insects are indeed pretty damn amazing animals, and a great model for robotics.  The authors have continued their work on the hexapod gait, and have proposed several models of ways in which legs might be built–in both roaches and robots–to respond quickly to problems.

Science is awesome.

Citation: Jindrich DL, & Full RJ (2002). Dynamic stabilization of rapid hexapedal locomotion. The Journal of experimental biology, 205 (Pt 18), 2803-23 PMID: 12177146

Revzen S, Koditschek DE, & Full RJ (2009). Towards testable neuromechanical control architectures for running. Advances in experimental medicine and biology, 629, 25-55 PMID: 19227494

Also: Just look at how easily the Star Wars AT-AT or AT-STs were destroyed by the rebels! Tripod-gait woud have saved the empire!

Filed under: Entomology, Insects, Science Tagged: locomotion, research, robotics, tripod gait
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