I fed the bees today like usual; the plan is to feed them every Monday and Friday morning. The hive that the bee was acting weird in the other day was entirely dead today, but it wasn’t a surprise since there was only one little bee left when I saw them last.
Window rain
Fall rain
My plan for today was to go watch the bees on campus again, but the rain this morning stopped me. I did manage to accidentally find a few on the sidewalk… I guess today was a day for a lot of dead bees.
I decided to watch Chris’ bees (the alive kind). He has them set up so that they have to fly in order to forage because he is doing research on bee flight mechanics. He is hoping that the bees in this set up will fly more in his experiments because they don’t spend their entire lives in a box. The bees in the hives upstairs never leave their enclosures unless they manage to escape. His bees have to fly well enough in order to land in the small foraging tubes on one the side of the box, and also to get back into their hive which is connected to the other side.
Feeding the bees is no problem anymore! I’m not sure if it’s because the hives are smaller now, or if I’m just getting used to it. It’s probably a little of both.
Pulling inspiration from Dr. Guzzo and her work in Ucross-Pollination, today I paid close attention to bee sounds. I noticed that an agitated queen sounds different than the other bees, and that the bees chewing at the tape create a distinct clicking noise (Lois pointed this out to me on day 1, but I really took the time to listen today.)
I also saw a bee acting rather strange in our sick hive. Last Friday, there were only two live bees left in this hive, and the same two were still moving this morning, but one of them almost looked drunk. When I went back upstairs, the little bee was dead.
I took this picture to show what the hives look like. In order to feed them, you lift the lid and toss bee patties in. The hive on the table in the back is where the sick bee was at.
Lab Meeting
Today for lab meeting, Michael sent us outside to catch fall queens around the University of Wyoming. Chris, Christie, Delina and I went, and Kennan caught up with us a little later. We ended up catching four queens, and I everyone was happy to teach me about bees, wasps, and flies along the way.
We actually found a bombus huntii queen right off the bat, but she agilely avoid capture. So, we continued our search. Christie (local bee expert) helped me identify the difference between a male and a female bee. The males have more fuzz on their face, and they are shaped differently. Chris says that male bumblebees have mustaches, so you can look for that, too. I also noticed that the females seemed to curl much more than males. Christie told me that no male insects sting because they lack the organs to do so.
Male
Female
Male or Female?
Can you tell what gender the bee on the right is?
Male bees are harmless.
We also talked about leaf-cutter bees, lovingly nicknamed Cheeto-butt bees by Christie (Delina also enjoys this nickname) because they don’t have pollen baskets and collect pollen on their abdomens. After she mentioned these bees, we walked by leaves that they cut, and later they caught one, and we found another one on a flower!
Cheeto-butt bee in the wild
Cut by leafcutter
Cheeto-butt bee in a vial
Cheeto-butt bee in the wild 2
We caught two wasps today. One male yellow jacket, and one wasp that Christie thinks might be a paper wasp. You can tell that the yellow jacket is a male because it has seven segments in it’s abdomen; females have six. We know that the paper wasp is male because of the curliness of his antennae.
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I’m not sure who caught this, but it looks pretty dangerous for a harmless fly. They pointed out that fly faces are pretty ugly compared to bee faces, and I agree!
Imposter fly
Imposter fly 2
These are all of the queens that we caught; all of them are bombus huntii. The queens are for an overwintering experiment that Kennan is doing, and she needs more than 150 of them!
Christie’s Queen
Back at the lab
Kennan saw this queen as we were leaving and scooped her up!
Chris didn’t even need a net to catch this queen because she hadn’t yet warmed up for the day.
Today I fed the bees entirely on my own with no problems. I was even able to feed the hive that had been giving me problems! When I was finished, Lois decided to teach me some morphology. When I got there, she was using a microscope hooked up to the computer to measure the distance between the bee’s wings (right where they attach to the body.) I watched her do that, then she showed me how to collect fuzz from the be and its wings and put them on a slide. We set the scale on the microscope, then used the slide and the computer program to measure the length of the fuzz. At that point, we were finished and Lois shoed me how to put everything away before she left for class.
I also decided to make more bee food (VOS patties) for Monday. I was a little unsure of the pollen to nectar ratio, but I feel like I did alright!
This was actually the day that I decided to start this blog, so I took some time to take some pictures for the website.
Today was my first day in Michael’s lab. I was pretty nervous, but it was very laid back. I met Kennan, and she showed me around. We went upstairs and I saw the hives for the first time. She breezed over how to feed bees, the sting protocol, and each station in the lab. I’ll learn bee care in detail with Lois on Friday.
After the basic tour and introductions, we had our first lab meeting of the semester. Michael was out with a head cold, but I got to know a little bit about everyone’s current projects, timelines, and goals. Listening to everyone’s ideas was very interesting, but it left me wondering where I will fit into all of this. I guess we will find out!
Today I fed the bees without Lois! She was down in the lab doing morphology while I was upstairs feeding the bees. It actually went really well! The same hive that gave me issues the other day still would not get away from the lid, so I had to ask Lois to drop food into that hive. Other than that, there were no issues. I actually enjoyed it even though I was nervous.
I did not mention this earlier, but my mother and brother are extremely allergic to bees, so my twin sister and I were raised to be extremely careful around them. I’ve never been stung, so I don’t know what would happen. I told Kennan that I was worried and she tried to put me at ease by telling me that people who have had an allergic reaction to a bee sting might not have a reaction next time, but conversely, people who have never had a reaction always could… Everyone is on (kind of) even playing ground!
Anyway, after I fed the bees, Lois taught me how to make more patties. This involves mixing pollen collected from the same species of bee with nectar, and forming it into patties using a syringe and a tiny metal spatula. It was not difficult at all, and it smelled fantastic.
This morning I fed the bees with Lois again. This time, I did more work on my own, trying to get more comfortable with the idea of my hand being inches away from the angered buzzing bees that we are trying to care for. These hives are important to take good care of since Kennan needs so many bees for her experiments.
I felt pretty confident feeding bees today, and Lois let me do most of the work. She helped me make sure I was counting the left over food right (some patties are counted, some are not, depending on if the bees have built anything on them.) I also learned to look out for rejected larvae.
There was one hive that I had a particularly difficult time feeding since there were so many bees in it and a lot of them were crawling around on the ceiling (where the door to feed them is.) Kennan joined us and offered to feed them. Calmly, she lifted the lid and tossed the patties in, but one bee escaped. Lois and Kennan caught the bee. Unfortunately, when Kennan tried to return the first escapee, another bee got out, but she deftly captured both before they could even leave the top of the hive. The whole experience was fairly alarming to me, but Lois and Kennan were fine. I guess you get used to the bees after a while!
Today Lois taught me bee care procedures. These include counting dead bees, food, nectar, and, of course, dropping more food in with the bees. It is actually a little scary trying to drop food into the hives (you have to lift the lid, drop the food in, and close the lid before anyone escapes.) The bees are sensitive to vibrations and CO2, so you have to be careful not to breathe on them or bump the table. When you drop food patties in, all of the bees start buzzing, which adds to their intimidation.
Despite the fact that the bees seem scary, the bumblebees are actually not very aggressive, and people in the lab do not usually get stung. Today, one bee escaped, so I got to see how to catch the bee and return it to its hive, incident free.
Play With Bees 