bee surprised
less manipulation and more observation; backyard 8-frame beekeeping without chemicals
Sunday, March 10, 2024
MABA swarm hotline
Sunday, March 3, 2024
mason bee sex
iNaturalist is for recording observations of individual living things, particularly things that can be tied to a species name. iNat uses photos with a date, location, and crowdsourced identification. iNat's response to the last photo was Genus Osmia (139 native species of mason bee in North America).
Perplexity AI is a conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text. Perplexity's response to, "Are male mason bees smaller or larger than female mason bees?" Click on the small numbers that link the response to a reference.
Male mason bees are smaller than female mason bees. Females are larger than males, with shorter, thicker antennae. Mason bees are generally much smaller than honey bees or bumblebees, measuring only about 1/4 inch long1
Monday, February 19, 2024
winter-flowering ornamental cherry tree 2024
Year after year, this tree has produced great bee photos foraging on winter-flowering cherry tree. The time was 2 PM, the temperature was 57°F (13.9°C), blue sky, sunshine, and a loud buzz of bees on this quiet street.
What's next? Crabapple trees (thanks to Trees Atlanta) are beginning to leaf-out and those flowers will be here soon and attracting honey bees too.
does the cluster provide insulation?
I discovered 2 interesting articles by Derek Mitchell (PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds), one is intended for a general honey bee audience, the other a hard-core engineering-science article. This blog post contains 2 images from those articles.
- Honeybees cluster together when it’s cold – but we’ve been completely wrong about why
- Honeybee cluster—not insulation but stressful heat sink
Facts about bees wintering in thin-wall wood hives:
- bees move from the hive edges towards the center of the hive to form a cluster
- as temperatures fall, the cluster shrinks - see the image from Derek's article
- the cluster core is hot compared to the cluster periphery.
- bees in the core consume honey and keep bees in the periphery warm.
- in extreme winter temperatures, bees on the periphery risk death by hypothermia
- the cluster periphery is denser than the core
Derek writes, "Since the early twentieth century, the outer layer (mantle) of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in the winter cluster has been said to insulate the cluster core."
A shrinking cluster increases density, reduces porosity, and increases heat loss. Here I'm using porosity to describe the amount of empty (air) space, or porosity = empty space ÷ total space. Typically a thermal insulator reduces heat loss by trapping air and is therefore low in density. The higher density cluster periphery is not a thermal insulator - has never been a insulator. Beekeepers need not stress bees in extremely cold temperatures when insulation is readily available.
- take a quick look in beekeeping catalogs and you'll discover flexible hive wraps - flexible wraps roll-up for easy storage and reusable next winter
- solid foam board insulation for home improvement is available for purchase or free as building waste
Saturday, February 10, 2024
Winter Top Ventilation
If you turn to page 116 of Seeley's book The Lives of Bees, you'll find a reference to Derek Mitchell a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds. With web-based searching, I discovered Derek's 2017 article in the American Bee Journal (Vol. 157 No. 8) Honey Bee Engineering: Top Ventilation And Top Entrances. The article illustrates that adding top ventilation significantly reduces humidity and the depth of the heat pool when compared to an uninsulated hive. Why? Warmer air is more buoyant and flows faster through the top vent.
Providing hive insulation in winter reduces bee-generated heat loss and this increases the temperature of the heat pool found at the top of the hive - see the image from Derek's article. I'm using the word heat pool as temperatures measured relative to the top of the hive -- I recognize, pool is commonly used with liquids that fill upwards from the bottom of containers. I currently use insulated hive wraps in winter and plan to close my top vent moving forward.
Derek has simulated the heat flow of a winter bee cluster in a thin-walled wooden hive and compared those results with measurements collected by other researchers. I plan to discuss this article in an upcoming blog post.
Friday, September 22, 2023
nematodes as a biologic control
On December 24, 2022, Atlanta experienced a historic single digit 8°F (-13.3°C) minimal temperature. This cold snap turned green ground cover brown and likely pushed small hive beetles (SHB) deeper into hives and compost piles.
My bee yard has high shade, good soil moisture, and summer soil temperatures for SHB reproduction. I used biological control, Beneficial nematodes (Heterorhabditis Indica), to treat the soil for SHB larvae. At dusk, I watered the liquid nematode suspension onto the soil. Direct sunlight (UV light) is fatal to nematodes.
It's one thing to see and squash adult SHBs with my hive tool and another stranger thing to take a leap of faith releasing after dark 'The Smallest Show on Earth' - Step Right Up! Step Right Up!
- Moved the insulated FedEx mailer with 2.5 million microscopic nematodes to the refrigerator.
- Removed the leaf litter at the hive locations and then wet the soil.
- The next step was washing nematodes from gel transport material - small gel pieces can clog the watering can. I used a large strainer with a fine mesh to remove and rinse the numerous gel pieces.
- Added more water to the bucket and stirred it to keep the nematodes from settling to the bottom.
- At dusk, I watered the biologic control onto the soil.
Saturday, September 2, 2023
clean wax with slow cooker 2023
I switched to a round slow cooker (crock pot) to clean the crushed honeycomb and this led me to simplify my crushed comb cleaning steps using a colander.
- crushed honeycomb - link for bee yard and kitchen activities
- after several days of straining, I rinsed the crushed comb in warm water
- selected a colander of the same diameter as the round slow cooker lid
- line colander with cotton fabric and I mounded with rinsed crushed comb
- added lid and joined cotton fabric edges with 2 bull clips
- removed the colander and added 1 cup of water and lid to the slow cooker
- be safe and melt the wax outdoors
- set slow cooker on high for 1 3/4 hours
- turned off the slow cooker and let it cool undisturbed to room temperature with the lid on
ChatGPT generated haiku
Crush, strain, honey's flow,
Slow cooker's gentle embrace,
Clean comb's sweet glow.