A few years ago, we had a hush/hush project. Our client wanted to know
whether we could get bees to work from boats. We conducted the trial in
Florida, in the Gulf, with the assistance of Jerry Hayes and one of his bee
inspectors.
I can't discuss what our client hoped to achieve, but I can comment on bees
on boats.
1) the Fl bee inspector remembered that Fl beekeepers, at one time had
floated bees in the mangrove swamps, and he found pictures and descriptions of
water-based FL bee operations, and
2) we re-discovered things about bee behavior on boats.
First day, we couldn't get the bees to leave their hives, they just more or
less hunkered down. The up/down movement seemed to disorient them.
And then, we got more wind, and things got even worse in terms of movement,
since we were using a small pontoon boat. We had to go back to the
marina, wait for a better day. Next morning was even worse, but wind slacked off
about noon.
So, we motored out in to the Gulf, anchored a 100 yards off-shore.
Still had a good bit of chop, and we all assumed bees would still be a no
go, but apparently after a day or so of boat movement, they had adjust, so
as soon as we anchored, they began to fly, and we saw bees going from the
boat to land and back in less than 30 minutes. They'd spiral around the
boat when leaving, then bee line to the shore. They seemed to orient on the
canopy of the boat.
Once they had flown, they went to work, just as if they were on shore.
Sometimes things got pretty bouncy, but that didn't seem to bother them.
So, it appeared that the bees needed to get their 'sea legs'.
Now, we did have one more surprise. We had another set of colonies on
shore at a different location. End of trials, we had to pick them all up and
take them back to their owner.
The shore-based bees responded to being picked up and loaded, as one would
expect. Had to use smoke, and the guard bees were quick to fly out of the
hives.
The boat-based bees didn't pay any attention to being picked up and
loaded. Apparently, they got used to hive movement and bumps.
Jerry
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L
|
