Global Swarming Honeybees: Inspecting Dead Colonies

3.31.2008

Inspecting Dead Colonies

This weekend, Wren and I had the sad, unpleasant, and yes, fascinating task of trying to ascertain what caused the death of two of our three colonies.

I'll be posting a detailed description, plus many photos, of what we found, but the two key findings were mold (in Green Hive) and mites (in Rebel Rebel hive).

I strongly suspect ventilation problems killed Green Hive. The situation in Rebel Rebel seems a bit more confusing for reasons I'll get into later.

Here's one picture from Rebel Rebel hive. The comb is upside down; I turned the comb over so I could rest the top bar on the hive in order to take the shot. Even in the sad context of "autopsying" a failed colony, it was impossible not to admire the beauty of the bees' cosmopolis.More details on all this coming soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: it really is gaudi-esque....although I think he was a fan of bee architecture.; March 31, 2008 at 7:13 PM
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg said...: Good point! For some reason, the architecture makes me think also of the moody, somewhat melancholic architectural imaginings of Hugh Ferriss.; March 31, 2008 at 8:28 PM

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Quotes of Note

"The cynicism that you have is not your real soul."—Yoko Ono
"The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance."—Gail Collins
"How do you inherit the earth? By being awake."—Joni Mitchell
Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form.”—Judith Coche
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."—Philip K. Dick
"A meddling beekeeper is said to be the bees' worst enemy, and this may be true."—Ormond Aebi, The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping
"For too long we have been locked in an old fashioned, reductionist approach, dealing with bees as if they were mere machines created solely for our benefit, instead of highly evolved, wild creatures, with which we are privileged to work."—Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper
"Neither among the bees nor any other animals that have a ray of our intellect, do things happen with the precision our books record. Too many circumstances remain unknown to us."—Maurice Maeterlinck
"In these times, acceleration spoils everything."—Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Musicologist
"Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."—Barbara Kingsolver
"Healthy, happy bees don't need any additives."—Dee A. Lusby
"When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird."—Audubon
"There is a certain valid moment for every cloud."—Paul Strand

"For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance."—Wm. Longgood, The Queen Must Die