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Thread: Morphometry procedures and standards

  1. #11
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    Hi Gavin,

    Don't forget John, Enid and yourself will be there.

    Hi Rosie,

    I have heard of bees coming out of suspended animation but it has never happened to me yet. I also tend to use the step to step mode on Drawwing as I like to check all the wings as it goes through the scan. I have also washed sticky bees after capture with honey and dried them and still get good scans. I have collected dead bees off the hive floor when changing floorboards in the Spring, although there is a risk in that there may be dead bees from other hives that have drifted and been killed. I only checked the wings to confirm the result I got already got in the Autumn.
    I also had a domestic when my wife spotted the orange top specimen sample tubes we use in the labs in the frozen veg section of our freezer. My samples have now been banished to the old spare freezer I bought. I sometimes let my wife keep her frozen meals there when 'her' freezer is full.

  2. #12
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    ... and Terry C, Andrew A, Doris F, Margie R, Donna C, Torquil C .... anyone who is anyone!

    I haven't checked, but we may have most of the Scottish BIBBA membership there.

    The efficacy of the 24hr freezing might vary according to the sample size, the container and indeed your freezer. Personal experience suggests that 48hrs is safer!

    G.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Patterson View Post
    Nellie,

    As already "advertised" in an earlier post why not come along to the Morphometry weekend at Stoneleigh 20/21 Nov?

    You have my email.

    Roger Patterson.
    I'm going to try and make it to Stoneleigh, the Scotland event is a little too far for me to make it and clashes with a beginner's course that I'm helping run.

  4. #14
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    Just been taking a potter around the various sites for things such as Drawwing. I think I'm going to leave taking the actual samples until spring and spend the remaining time figuring out just what it is that I think I'll get from this, the ladies are pretty much done for this year and I don't fancy disturbing them now just to satisfy my curiosity, there's no rush and, touch wood, they'll still be there come spring.

  5. #15
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    There is also the angle of course that you don't have bees that look like natives (if I remember correctly) nor a group of beekeepers locally to join forces with. Hard to make a lot of progress in that situation, though maybe it is never too early to start!

  6. #16
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    In the short term no, I'm not actually in much of a position to worry about how native my bees are or do much to try and enforce that. But I'm wanting to expand and (at least) double up again to 6 colonies. Going from 1 to 2-3 colonies is pretty limiting in what you can realistically do when you've only got one colony to begin with.

    The morphometry thread possibility isn't the best place to go into generic queen rearing discussion, but even if in the short term I'm not realistically going be able to do much around native stocks I do want to start looking at improving my colonies/queens and even if it's only interesting rather than useful information I'd be quite interested to see what something like drawwing makes of the 3 colonies at the moment.

  7. #17
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    Nellie, have you got time and energy to start a local queen rearing group? If so you need to recruit a number of local beekeepers and organise yourselves to breed from your best and be prepared to swap genetic material between each other. We have 15 queen rearers in my area and we are divided into 5 small groups. between us we cover a huge part of Denbigshire and Flintshire and probably control a large proportion of the drones in the sky. We hold meetings and compare results (breeding success, methods, colony traits and wing morphometry etc). It would add a new dimension to your beekeeping and would result in fairly quick improvement in both your beekeeping and your stock.

    You don't need to be experienced yourself to do the organisation but but it would help if you could get a few experienced beekeepers on board and especially a queen rearer or 2. You can organise visiting speakers to come and help with some of the technical stuff.

    Steve

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    Steve,

    The short term answer, unfortunately is "no" right now.

    In the longer term it is something I want to look into and know there's at least one other beek in the area wanting to do something similar.

    I've just taken on Education for the association and it's something that is keeping me very busy right now. I've also got to acknowledge that I'm still pretty new to this beekeeping malarky and that perhaps I should still be trying to concentrate on getting the basics right before taking on another pet project. If I drew a 4 miles circle around my colonies then I'd have to suggest that I perhaps only know of maybe a 1/3rd of the beekeepers around me.

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Patterson View Post
    Nellie,

    As already "advertised" in an earlier post why not come along to the Morphometry weekend at Stoneleigh 20/21 Nov?

    You have my email.

    Roger Patterson.
    Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger. After hours of careful negotiation with SWMBO to get her to agree that Stoneleigh is indeed a picturesque jewell in the British crown and worthy of a weekend away I've just realised why the date looked familiar despite nothing being in my diary.

    It's the association AGM!

  10. #20
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    Why don't you give your apologies. The worse that could happen is you will be voted onto the committee in your absence. Kenilworth is a nice town and close to Stoneleigh

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