Excerpted from sci.agriculture.beekeeping
---
From: "Ruary Rudd" <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: Morphometry

> Ok..but could you explain some more about 'acquiring' the plots to
> add to the 'spreadsheet?'  Will I need a microscope, and a tiny
> ruler? Is there a URL that goes into this procedure?

Morphometry is the process of determining the racial purity of a colony of
bees by measuring external characteristics of a sample of the bees.

The sample needs to be large enough to be representative, at least 25 bees
on the continent, at least 30 in U.K. and preferably 50 if you really want
to know.

The starting point is the measurement of some of the veins and vein joints
in the wings!!!, you can mount them on a 35mm slide and project the image
onto a screen and measure from the image ; OR you can use a scanner with at
least 1200 dpi optical resolution, and us the graphics program to tell you
where you are in the picture.

These co-ordinates are used to convert to give the ratios required to obtain
Cubital ratio and discoidal shift.

As the WebPages states there are other characteristics which should be
measured. the length of overhairs can be measured by comparing it with the
thickness of frame wire, the characteristics are longer than, same length or
shorter than. The only difficult measurement is length of tongue which
requires dissection.