fruits of their labor

honeybee hot air balloons,

albuquerque, nm

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the boys worked hard all summer, taking care of the bees with me...extracting honey...selling honey and "bee happy lemonade"at the port city farmers market...

the pensacola news journal ran a snapshot of the boys at their lemonade stand earlier in the summer, and did a wonderful piece on us in late august or early september. what a huge compliment!

we decided to use the funds earned from all that hard work to take an educational field trip - not a vacation, a "field trip". here are a few snapshots from our 2 week excursion...

cerrillos, nm

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adrian, texas

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cadillac ranch, amarillo, tx

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wt helps anchor the honeybee hot air balloons...

all 48 pounds of him

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hot air balloon festival

albuquerque, nm

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half-way point on route 66

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palo duro canyon texas

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andrew reading the book of james to us at bedtime

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cerrillos, nm

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sandia peak, nm

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tent rocks, nm

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santa fe, nm

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welcome to the world

(notes from september 3, 2009)

a great day working bees with laney. we got to see several workers hatch, but i was the only one celebrating. there wasn't a little welcoming committee waiting for the newbies to hatch... no cake, no banners, no marching band. not even a pat on the back. they just climbed out and got right to work! hmmm, might be a lesson in this...

look closely and you will see larvae at different stages. they progress in a fairly orderly fashion from younger larvae at the bottom of the frame to capped brood at the top of the frame.


capped brood with one working her way out...


closer view of the new arrival...

the cell on the top right is working her way out all on her own. the one on the left had a little help. she was just beginning to hatch when i peeled back the cap with a pencil point so i could photograph her emerging.
a curious nurse bee. wonder if she is giving the baby her assignment in bee-speak...


notice that she is blonder than the older nurse bee. she also has more hair on her thorax, which often, but not always indicates younger bees. she'll stay in the hive for about a month before she graduates to "forager".
and she's on her way.

math and biology questions

(notes from august 22, 2009)


got in esther's hive yesterday and rejoiced! i found many larvae, a few capped brood cells, and a queen cell. but then i got to thinking (uh-oh, here we go) and it doesn't make sense.


doug, the state inspector, was here on mon aug 10 and we found no eggs, larvae and only a few capped brood cells, if any, i would have to check my notes to recall for sure...and 2 queen cells ready to hatch. yesterday was day 11. google says avg developmental period is 16 days, and start of maturity is 23 days and up.

so i'm trying to figure an earliest case scenario.... if we count day 1 as the day she was laid as an egg, and if she hatched out of the egg the very day that doug was here, then aug 10 would be day 16. that would make day 23, the start of maturity, mon aug 17. if she mated right away and started laying eggs, then the eggs would become larvae by thurs aug 20. that means that when i saw them friday they would only be day old larvae... i don't know how big day old larvae should be, but these looked kind of big, which makes me a little suspicious.


i have heard talk of laying workers, but i don't know what that looks like. can a worker lay an egg that will develop? i know it would be a sterile egg, but if those eggs could develop, would those eggs then become drones? (found out later that yes, these bees would be drones and that a laying worker will lay in a spotty pattern often with several eggs per cell. however, a worker will not usually start laying until the hive has been queenless for about 35-40 days.)



it should be clear now why i chose to study art in college rather than math or science.



also of interest... after i brought the swarm home, and dried everything out and put it away for storage, i left one frame out. there were about 15 bees that seemed so content on there. i wanted to see what they would do. eventually they capped off a cell, looked like a drone cell. i opened it up today and lo and behold there was one little bee that probably would have hatched out in a day or 2. what's up with that? did a worker lay that egg? or is it possible that the queen that i euthanized laid that egg while she was in the box for about a day? i shook the bees off in front of the hives but they didn't want to go back in. will check on them tomorrow and see if they are still hovering where the frame used to be.



as laney says, this is my year for recording "bench marks". they are really keeping me guessing.

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(notes from august 26, 2009)
P.S.

i dont think esther could have been gone that long, but i can't prove it either, so i'm thinking she was seduced at 23d. i guess someday when i have the time to closely observe the hive on a daily basis, i'll learn how to spot a 4d,5d,6d,7d,8 day old larva. i did scrape off some brood cells from the bottom of the frames when doug was here and stuck them in the deep freeze for the boys to dissect someday soon, so i went and checked on them to compare what i remember about the size of the larvae in the hive and the size in the freezer...the ones in the freezer were much bigger, filled up the whole cell. the ones in the hive looked big to me at the time, but they were still way down in the cell, so maybe what i'm seeing is the difference of 4 days...

since they were all laid together in a nice pattern in the center of the frame, i'm thinking they will be of royal birth! so now i can get back to my rejoicing...