The bee trip!!!

Lisa Merritt
The bee trip
6/17/2016


This was absolutely my favorite part of bio 213!! I did not grow up around bugs and bees. I was just fascinated by the amount of bees there were!! There were hundreds of them!! Also, Every bee has there job. The drones are the bigger bees (They are HUGE!!) and they dont gather nectar like worker bees their whole job is to fertilize the queen. I also learned from other research, after mating drones die, and when winter comes they are killed off by the other bees because they are no longer essential to the hive. The worker bees are all female and are the necatr collectors. Then there is the queen who is the mot important, bigggest and job is egg layer. The last is the worker bee which is the one that gathers nectar from the flowers. In order for us to enter the beehive we had to wear bee suits and Gwen sedated them with smoke. We essentially opened every section of the beehive and checked for honet and the location of the queen. After the queen is located the beehive check is done. Thanks Gwen for taking us out and Chris for answering my many questions.

Being beezy with the Bees

Sorry if the format of this is weird but I'm posting this from my phone cause I have no internet at my new place... Anyways!

Visiting the bees was a great way to finish off the quarter. I've always heard and seen bee keepers and how they have kept their hives but I've never been able to actually experience it. The visit made me appeciate bees more and understand how structured they are as a group. Each type of bee has a role that helps the group prosper overall and it's amazing how serious they are about it. No one slacks off and they're willing to do and sacrifice for the "greater good" even if it means their life.

There were 3 types of bees we learned about. The worker bees (the females who pretty much do all the work you can think of whether it's building the hive, pollenating flowers and making the honey), the drone bees (which are slightly bigger male bees who protect the hive from danger or threats) and then lastly the queen bee (the largest of them all who is the sole reason why there is even a hive to begin with). It was awesome cause we were able to see her and she was just walking around like a bad chick (like she owned the place). I also thought it was interesting how during the winter the females kick all the male bees out because the drones have no purpose since everything is hibernating. When they get kicked out, they end up dying which to me I thought was crazy. It was also interesting to see baby bees being born too. Luckily the hive I was able to look at had everything that we learned about so it was cool to see what you've learned in action.

Overall I enjoyed the trip & just being able to be more hands on with my learning. Thank you to Gwen and for our tour guide for walking us through what bee keepers do. It was a great experience!

P.S

I have a bunch of really great pictures but my phone won't let me download them :( I can email them if you would like to see them!

Bee Field Trip By Robert Barker

I wish I had taken a picture of my bee suit on but, I did not. I actually did not taken any pictures I was too fascinated listening that the opportunity did not present itself. My grandmother was a avid bee keeper for awhile. This was my first experience of bee keeping and it was fascinating. I learned that the smoke you use to calm the bees down does not harm them at all. I also learned that the queen had her own compartment that she could not go up any higher in the bee hive.

I also was amazed how many bees were on the slates making honey. I may do more bee keeping in my lifetime. Thanks gwen for presenting this inspiring opportunity.

Bee Field Trip

Beeing Busy
By: Matthew Heinekin

Bees are quite fascinating creatures, the way they communicate, reproduce, and even build there amazing and complex hives. This field trip was quite amazing, due to the fact that we were given the opportunity to view the Bees and their hives up close in personal, and this was the first time that I have ever done something like this. Before this field trip I knew that there were worker bees and a queen bee, but I had never once heard of drone bees or even for a lack of a better term "garbage disposal bees." Whats cool about the drone bees is that they help protect the colony and reproduce with the queen bee. The garbage bees were also quite interesting because at the very bottom of the housing unit was a small tray that housed dead bees and or debris. Also if some bees die inside the hive these garbage bees will carry the dead away from the hive and leave them there.

 Figure 1 is depiction of one of the suits that we wore during the up close and personal bee experience, you definitely need to make sure everything is zipped up and that you have the right size so that no bees can enter and sting you. Figure 2 shows the housing unit for the bees, now based on what I observed, I noticed that the upper level was primarily where honey was developed, the next layer down was where the wax was produced and the third layer was where they were mainly reproducing. Gwen, our instructor in yellow in Figure 2, was using a smoker in order to move bees out of her way so that she could open up the hive without killing a ton of bees. the main ingredients for the smoker was I believe wood chips and old test papers. Lastly in Figure 3 it shows a great representation of there amazing comb structure. What I find that is really fascinating is that each individual comb is pretty much exactly the same size, shape and depth. That must take some extraordinary skill an talent. Overall this trip was a success and I learned a lot about bees.

Figure 1. These were the Bee Keeping suits that we wore when we got up close and personal with the Bees.

Figure 2. This picture shows the housing unit for the Bees with three main layers and Gwen using a smoker to move the Bees out of the way.

Figure 3. Beeing Busy as usual. This pic here shows all the worker bees as well as some larvae in those solid yellow comb.

Beehive Project Observation by Kyle

Bees are interesting creatures with complexity in terms of behaviors and physiology. This beehives project had given me the opportunity to observe bees and their hives, and learned quite a lot about them. Most importantly, I can link many ecological aspects to analyse and understand the bee colony.

By observing how bees interact with one another, I observed that there is a little ecology in the bee's colony. This is due the fact that there seemed to me three types of bees in the colony and each type is dependent on each other; hence, acting as biotic factors. The types of bee encompass a female queen, female workers, and male drones. Female queen functions to lay eggs. Female workers build cells, and collect pollen to name a few. Male drones defend the colony and help the queen reproduce. From this we can see that male drones and female workers also function to interact with other species such as flowers and animals. Everything here is interconnected.

I also learned that the distribution of bees can be influenced by exposing them to smoke that they tend to avoid it. Smoke itself here is an abiotic factor.  The following picture is taken by Shawna illustrating how Gwen, our professor influence the bee to go inside of the hive by using smoke.

Furthermore, from the observation, I seemed to notice other insects living in close proximity with the bees. However, the type of interaction between bees and them have yet to be determined.

In relation to how human are interacting with the bees, human can sure benefit from extracting honey from the hives which is rich in carbohydrates. What I found from this observation was that there is another substance rich in proteins produced by bees. Apparently, this can benefit human with respect to providing a source of protein. Nevertheless, it uncertain whether this substance is harmful or not. And whether the taste is pleasant. If not, should genetic engineering affects human positively? Does exposing bees to different condition affects the quality of the production? Answers to these questions maybe helpful to food and health industries.
   
All in all, this bee project have made me gaining more insight into how ecology works. The real life application. A sincere thank you to Gwen for the teaching, hard work, enthusiasm and knowledge. Thanks to Shawna for the picture.