As I posted a while back I'll start doing 'read and write' pieces on here.
No weather Report, no hive Reports, well if you want to see bees, scroll down, I have a surprise there that has nothing to do with cleaning out my dropbox that's stashed with documents.
I hope to find some gems in there and today I'm reading a paper written by Dries Laget from the University of Gent, Department Honey bee Valley.
Dries Laget is the founder of the project VespaWatch. The project keeps an eye out on how the Asian Hornet is doing here in Flanders, Belgium. It also does 'pest control' towards this Vespa Velutina.
To keep an ear to the ground, or rather a monitoring device inside the hive, they have 35 systems active spread across Flanders. It comprises of a recording device for sound, it has scales and measures the outside temperature and temperature inside the brood nest (if the sensors are placed in the right spot). Oh I almost forgot they also measure humidity inside the hive and the amount of rainfall there is. (If you want to see what devices are being used, head over to www.arnia.co.uk.
The report I'm reading is an interpretation of data recorded from 22 systems from september 2018 to 16 October 2018. I'm not sure how useful this report is since the time period is rather short... But that's not the main goal for this document, it is meant to showcase what data can be collected and how it can lead to interpretation of what's going on.
The Scales
First the document shows the scales are very accurate.
Looking at one day; When compared to the outside temperature you can see a drop in weight in the morning when temperatures are around 12°C; Indicating the foragers have left the hive to start their work. The coming and going of bees shows on the diagram in fluctuations of weight during the day. As temperatures start dropping the bees return and the scales stop fluctuating showing an overall increase of weight. Looking at the scales the next day shows that the weight has dropped again, this is accounted to the vaporisation of the water from the nectar, and possibly some consumption.
Comparing all these daily results over the whole period shows a clear correlation between the weather, the flow of nectar in plants and the weight of the hive.
As winter sets in a weight loss is noticed that does not follow this trend, what did cause is is unclear but could be attributed to the death of the 'summer' bees in combination with excluding drones from the hive (that were still present till that day)
Differences in resources across Flanders
As weather conditions were steady across the whole of Flanders between 15 - 21 september this was an ideal time to compare the flow of nectar. And there were differences! Some hives consumed, others only consumed what they could find and then there were those that found some or a lot of resources.
The abundance of resources is not always deemed profitable for the bees, some do see it as a good thing (pollen coming in late in the year) others say it's a negative thing for the bees as the broodnest gets clogged up with whatever they find preventing the queen to lay eggs to provide enough 'winter' bees + the amount of 'winter' bees that are already there shorten their lifespan by foraging! Both hypotheses are plausible, but cannot be confirmed (nor denied) by looking at the current (small) amount of date. Let's hope the continuation of this project helps solve this puzzle!
There we have it folks,
a short paper that now makes me wonder if I can find a follow up on this project... I'll have a look around and report back with the next Read and Write for you guys!
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On another note, I caught my first swarm of the year and deposited it in a hive at a Freinet School : De Kleine Wereld (The Small World) Here's a video on that (up on 21/04/2020 18:00)
