Journal Entries W13

8/1/16-Internship-Today Kim and I did another USDA sample to check for honey bee health. I believe that this service is quite an awesome survey. By looking at honey bee health throughout the state as well as throughout the country it can give a correct analysis to the overall health in the United States of America. The only think that I believe is not okay is the method of testing for tracheal mites. The test for tracheal mites involves taking a frame that has larvae and banging it on a pan which will drop the larvae on the pan. The USDA lab will be able to test for the mites. Ken stated that banging the brood on the pan actually kills the brood on the frame this can be dangerous especially this time of the year when there needs to be a high supply of brood for wintering. Kim and I thought of an alternative test of cutting out the larvae and sending the cut out part of the frame to the lab; this will not kill the whole frame so it will be more desirable to actually do this test.

8/2/16-Internship-Today Kim and I went to Xerces conference, this conference was really interesting because it showed us a farm that is a No-Till farm that also uses biochar. The point of this conference was to try to create better habitat for native pollinators. What this experienced actually showed me was how dependent we are to the honey bee pollination. I believe that because we are so connected to these bees we are actually causing them to die because the reliance on them. I consider an apiary that has many hives dangerous; by reducing the amount of hives and actually increasing the distances between hives we will reduce amount of diseases in the hives. This farm also showed the importance of not having the need to only use honey bees for pollination. It shows that crops are able to be pollinated without having a hive if we put the work and actually create habitats for these native pollinators. I believe that going to native pollination will be able to reduce pressure on the honey bee as well as increase pollination from native pollinators.

8/3/16-Internship-Today Kim and I went to Dan Conan’s apiary to do a USDA sample. These USDA samples are really cool because they are mapping out the health of bees all over the state. It would be really cool to color code the health of each apiary and map it to see the difference of health throughout the state as well as seeing health all over the USA.

8/4/16-Internship-Today Kim and I went to the UMass apiary to do management on the hives. What we wanted to see was how the bees were doing. We needed to check honey, pollen, brood amount in each hive. What we want to see in each hive is that there are at least four frames of pollen, a full super of honey and 9 brood frames at this time. If the hives are in this condition we know that they will be strong enough for the winter. This is also the right conditions so that the bees are able to emerge from the brood and start filling the hive with honey for winter stores.