All
I agree with Bob that inspecting your own bees should be part of proper bee
management. On the other hand, the response from Bee-Quick was on the mark.
A microscope may/may not provide any benefit for dealing with CCD and an
electron microscope is a VERY expensive and very fickle piece of hardware.
As per CCD, we simply don't know what's causing it. So we and no one else
have any way to mitigate or fix it, other than depending on luck. Good
beekeeping isn't enough. And you can't select CCD resistant queens - since we
don't know what it is. And no, I'm convinced, its not just mites.
And sorry Bob, but there are still major CCD collapses occurring across the
U.S. Not all of the folks coming back out of CA are thriving -- some got
back truckloads of empty boxes. And the newest wave of collapses are occurring
in strong colonies in the midst of rapid growth, with lots of nectar/honey,
frames of new pollen, 4-5 frames of brood (much of which is capped and
apparently healthy), and then the colonies drop to 2-3 frames of bees or less in a
matter of a few days. This has been happening in both the east and the west
parts of the U.S. over the past month.
As per checking your own bees. Again, as Bee-Quick indicated there are many
opportunities for training, and if there are none in your area, it should be
relatively easy for your local bee association to arrange one.
Now for a bit of better news -- I came across a new product, called the
MiScope (pronounced My Scope) while at the Ent Soc meetings. This should be of
interest to Bee-L members, since its a USB microscope. Plug it into your PC
and you can use it, even take pictures and videos with it!
We got one and its rather surprising, given the price. Great educational
tool - take your own micro-photos. It has a built-in illuminator - we went top
drawer and got the white light and infra-red built in, with a UV option.
Depth of field is limited, so you have to do some dissection off to the
side, then place under the scope. There is a much more expensive version that is
a true digital dissection scope.
The MiScope is small, it works well for what it was designed for, its not
too expensive, and you can capture images at will - even make videos of mites
running around. 40-140X magnification. This would be a great alternative to
the plastic scopes for getting kids interested in looking at things -
beekeepers too.
My crew had a great time -- photographing the hooks on the edge of the
wings, the pollen basket, etc. And yes, we have access to high end scopes, even
electronic microscopes requiring rooms with suppressed vibration, etc. But
none were so simple and easy to use and capture images.
The MiScope information/ordering is at:
_http://www.zarbeco.com/miscope_1a.htm_
(http://www.zarbeco.com/miscope_1a.htm)
Finally, we have no connection to this company other than being a satisfied
customer. Its not a toy, but a very useful device. If you use it with a
laptop in the field, you need a shield for your laptop screen. It can see down
into combs, but that's a bit awkward, not its best use. One tip, it
self-focuses, and on 3-d surfaces, its takes a bit of time and tends to hunt. At
first I thought it was of little use until I learned to give it time to focus
after changing magnification.
Cheers
Jerry
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm *
******************************************************
|
