One man's quest to ranch American bison in Virginia.
Bee update
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
The three beehives are still alive. A few weeks ago common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) was in flower. The tiny flowers, visible in the above photograph, produce an abundance of pollen, which the honeybees collected in large quantities. I always consider pollen collection to be a good indicator of hive health. Pollen only seems to be collected when there are bee eggs and larva and bee eggs mean that the queen is alive and healthy.
An image of a honeybee returning to the hive with yellow pollen packed into structures on its hind legs called "bee baskets."
When a foraging worker bee returns to the hive with a load of pollen she places it into an empty cell in the wax comb and then returns to foraging.
Cells filled with orange colored beebread are concentrated in the upper right corner of this photograph. The color of beebread can vary greatly depending on the type of pollen used as well as the specific molds and bacteria that are fermenting the bread. Also visible are capped brood cells (center) and newly laid bee eggs (lower left).
Other worker bees mix the pollen with honey and pack the mixture down into the cell and
then add more pollen and honey until the cell is mostly filled with the
dense mixture. This is then left alone and allowed to ferment into
something called beebread, which is critical for feeding bee larva.
Currently, based on observed pollen collection and bee activity, I would say that hives 1 and 4 are both very strong and hive three is nearly extinct. In my previous bee update I mentioned the discovery that hive 3 had somehow lost its queen, but still had a pretty strong population of worker bees. In an effort to save that hive and allow the bees to raise a new queen, I transferred a comb filled with newly laid bee eggs from hive 4 to hive 3. Now, more than a month later, it appears that this action was ineffective. The hive has dwindled in population and there is no evidence of any foraging activity. In fact, until I examined the beehives with the thermal imager last night (see below), I had assumed hive 3 had died out completely.
In the above nighttime thermal video the entrances of top bar beehives 4 (foreground) and 3 (background). Aside from the warm bodies (black is hot in this video) of a few bees wandering in an out of the hive, heat can also be seen radiating through the upper entrance holes of hive 4. Hive 3 is much cooler, but there are still at least two bees living there.
Since we started fencing the perimeter of our ranch in 2014, I've strove to increase the rate at which I am able to fence an area. Among the most recent improvements has been a t-post pusher which is mounted to our tractor's front-end loader bucket. This device is very simple, but has already saved us countless hours of work. The following photographs illustrate how I use the post pusher. Aiming: The loader is first positioned with the end of the pusher is close to the ground. I then maneuver the tractor until the end of the pusher is in alignment with the marked post location. This is how the lined up pusher looks from the driver's seat of the tractor. Yes, I know the loader has an issue with the hydraulics cover. Loading: Once the pusher is aligned, I place the tractor in park, raise the loader arm and insert a t-post into the open end of the pusher. Tilting: Correct placement of the t-post is dependent aligning the post along three axises,
For those of you who are unfamiliar with agricultural equipment, a cultipacker is an implement used to compress soil. There are several reasons a farmer may use a cultipacker, but, for me, the primary purpose for the cultipacker is to pack down soil that has just been planted with grass seed. This should greatly improve seed germination in newly planted bison pasture. Five truck tire rims welded together form the shape of the cultipacker. Technically this is really more of a cultipacker-roller hybrid as the ridged portions on the roller should be more closely spaced on a true cultipacker. A thick piece of steel tube runs through the center of the rims, which I'll explain later in this post. For added weight each tire rim was filled with concrete after it was welded in place. A photograph of the roller portion of the cultipacker completed and waiting for the concrete to cure. The length of steel tube that runs through the center of the roller is welded to the
Face flies beginning to appear a few days after my initial treatment with AiM-L VetCaps. I unfortunately don't have any photos of the original mob of flies, which was much worse. Since the forth of July an insect called the face fly ( Musca autumnalis ) has plagued our ranch and caused me a considerable amount of stress. It was a week ago, on the forth, while doing a routine check on the herd, that I noticed that the bison appeared to be greatly agitated by a surprisingly high number of the flies. While the sight of flies or other small insects buzzing around grazing animals is nothing unusual, this was something different. The flies flocked in groups around the eyes and nose of each animal so incessantly that the bisons' natural defenses appeared to be ineffective. All the blinking, ear flapping, tail wagging, snorting, rolling in soil, and rubbing on trees had little effect. No matter how many times they did these things the flies would just briefly fly up into the
Comments
Post a Comment