Halloween

Bee math

I am teaching a general biology course right now, and one of my students asked about why he sees so many dead bees on campus. Is this because of colony collapse disorder (CCD)? Or all the radiation from cell phones or the hospital?

Good question! And I really don't know the answer. I don't think our hives have been suffering from CCD or are dying more than average. Here is what I came up with, making a few assumptions and using a few facts about honey bee biology:

There are about 50 hives tucked into the corner of campus and in the summer each hive probably contains about 50,000 bees.

That is about 2.5 million bees! Since bees are working so hard in the summer, they have an average life-span of only about 6 weeks.

So if 2.5 million bees are dying every six weeks, that means 59,523 die every day, 2,480 die every hour, or a bee flies off to bee heaven once every 1.5 seconds.

I think the most likely explanation for the dead bees he's observed on campus is that there is a larger than average bee population here and thus more dead bees around.

What do you think?

Results

Powdered sugar is great. For donuts. Not so much for bees.

After a month of diligently dusting the bees every 3-4 days, I was finally able to measure the mite loads on Friday.

The results are not good: 100 per day for Droogie 1, 60 per day for Droogie 2. This huge increase in mites from the numbers that I counted in September is despite having fewer bees in each hive.

Here is a close-up picture of the sticky board that I put under the hive to do the mite count. I've put an arrow by several of the mites; many more are not marked.


This makes me sad. I haven't decided if I'll treat the bees or not- there is a small chance that they will survive the winter if I do nothing. But I'll probably order some formic acid pads and see if I can save them.

French bees

This is a great photo of the beehives in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris sent to me by a colleague. Apparently, the beehives have been at this site since 1856.

I wonder if French bees get more holiday than their American counterparts. Do they go on strike? Does the honey taste better because it is French?

They certainly have better hive covers.

White Russians

Sting, Stang, Stung

Last Thursday, while trying to shake powdered sugar all over my beehives, I received my first sting. It certainly wasn't the first bee sting in my life, not even the first in the last month; I was stung in the hand while Ellie and I were camping in Arroyo Seco in August. But this was the first time my bees thought I deserved some venom.

A bee got me in the ankle where I had pulled up my socks to cover the cuffs of my jeans. I tried to remove the stinger quickly to prevent additional venom from being injected, but it is possible that I missed it since I couldn't see where the stinger was and I was distracted by all the other bees that were thinking I needed a sting.

On Friday my foot began to swell and I developed a couple blisters around the sting site. I believe this is only a local immune reaction and so I'm not concerned about a systemic allergic response or anaphylaxis should I be stung again soon. However, it would be nice to be able to see the bones in my foot again.

Terrorist steals honey from a couch

This video made me laugh repeatedly. Some of the language used may not be safe for work, depending on where you work and whether or not you wear headphones.