Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: papabear on March 07, 2007, 05:23:01 pm
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I tried what I was told and I caught a bee. It took about 20min. for her to calm down and start eating the honey. While she was eating, I marked her with a orange paint pin. When she stopped eating I let her go. After 1 hour she didn't return so I caught another bee. This bee just about killed herself in the honey so I just let her out and she cleaned the honey off her. While she was cleaning, I went for another bee and BEHOLD the first bee I marked orange was on the same batch of clover flowers as the first time I caught her. This time after 20min or so, she was still mad and I had to leave for a while so I let her go. Maybe I will see her again soon. Here is the pic of the bee eating honey out of a bowl.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l65/kwrabbit/beelining.jpg)
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hmmm, why not just plant a bowl of honey, or better a container that can be closed... i guess you got the whole bee-lining thing a bit wrong.
do a little more research around the forum!
anyway, bee-lining isn't bee marking.
first you have to tell us your intentions? is it to find a feral hive, or (from what i see) trying to find if the bee is yours and returns to the hive?
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Don't give up!! It took me a couple tries to get one to cooperate. If nothin else catch 2-3 at one time.
I used white because when they take off toward thier hive, they go up usually into the trees, so it can make em hard to see against the leaves.
But, when they returned, the came back 2-3 inches off they ground.
I don't know if they will do that every time. But, I can't wait til springtime to find out!!! :-D :-D
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my intentions are to locate the hive the feral hive. Not just to mark the bees. The hive must be close because it only takes them about 3 or 4 min. the come around once we go outside.
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Might the field bee tell the others of her hive where the honey source is? Then you can have a bunch of bees to follow back to the feral hive.
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Yeah, That's the idea...
Give Her time to inform the rest of the hive about your honey.
Before long you have a whole buch of bees to fallow.
The closer you get to the feral hive the faster the bees will come. Because they have less and less distance to travel to get back to you.
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if i was you, i'd set them up a feeder (and i would take the afternoon to do this) and like they said, before you'll know it, you'll have full of bees and it's gonna bee easy to capture maybe 10 of them? just don't give them a whole lot of feeding stuff, you don't wanna have swarms of them at your yard!
search the net for bee-lining box,basicly it's a box with 3 compartments so you can let out on bee at a time. keep them all in one compartment, open it until there's only one in the 2nd one, and let her out from the 3rd.
actually this box is also good for capturing bees from flowers. someone gave me a good picture of it, but i misplaced it...search the web, maybe you'll find something.
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The reason I use powdered sugar is the whole bee turns white the bee now wants to get back to the hive to get clean. The problem for me is trying to follow the bee.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
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do bees always travel in a straight line back to their hive?
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do bees always travel in a straight line back to their hive?
Hell No!
The little buggers do everything they can to make sure I have to go through every thorn bush, cross major roads against the light, gator filled swamps, snake patches, and homeowners with shotguns. Then they will turn around and make you run through it again. I think bees find this very funny.
Me: ow ow ow , darn that hurts
Bee: Powder me will you. I will teach you. Stupid human.
Me: No don't turn around!
Bee: muhahaha :evil: look at him bleed.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
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As the crow flies, make a beeline. In reality both are usually the long way around. Both zigzag all over the place. If you want the shortest route use a compass.
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Let us know where you finally find them, Papabear!!!
I hada hard time fallowing them to their hive too.
But,After I got closer to the hive, I started to pay more attention on where the bees where coming "from".
That helped me more than anything.
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The only time I actually beelined was when I was doing a cut out. There got to be a whole lot of bees around sucking up the honey and I noticed they were coming from and going to the west of where I was. So I started walking in that direction. I would stop every now and then and wait for another bee or two to go zipping by East or West then walk some more. About a quarter of a mile from where I was doing the cut out I found them going/coming from a small hole at the base of an irrigation well. No marking or nothing. Just a bunch of bees coming and going.
They didn't have to fly high because the stuff they were robbing was on the ground and the hive was under ground, under the pump head.
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Foraging bees tend to return to the same FLOWER until it is empty of nectar. You can mark them and confirm this. You can also time them to get distance.
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/bsjun1992.htm
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Thanks for all the help
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You had any luck yet, Papa bear? :-D
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A few hints that may help:
1) Soak a hunk of sponge in honey to prevent further forager fatalities.
2) Cover your container with a dark cloth so that the bee(s) will not attempt
to fly, and will calm down and "fill up".
3) Punch a small hole in the lid, just large enough for a string, and feed a string
with a knot in the end through the hole. Them, when you are ready to
release the bee, you can do so from several yards away (break the seal and
take the cover off the container, but set the lid atop the container, so that
the string can pull the cover off). When released, the bee will circle a few
times, and then take off in the direction of the hive from which it came.
It is easier to track the bee if you are outside of the circling area.
4) If a bee is "full up", it will fly back towards the hive, but terrain and tree lines
may mean that its initial flight vector is not "towards the hive".
5) Consider using sugar water rather than honey, as sugar water is easier and
faster for the bee to collect.
6) Don't expect to get many return foragers. Better to capture bees,
release them, and triangulate the hive location.
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How do i triangulate?
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You catch bees and find the direction. You go several hundred yards at about 90 degrees or so from where that one went and do another. You draw a line on a map where each goes and figure out where they intersect. Or, if the bee went in t totally different direction you get more bees and put more lines on the map until some intersect.
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I tried it, and it did kinda give me a direction. But, no more than just fallowing the bee directly. I mean, you might find where the lines intersect. But trees aren't marked on a map!! lol :-D
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>But trees aren't marked on a map!!
That depends on the map. If you go to google map and get a satellite picture of the area and print it off, it DOES have the trees on it.
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You assume that bees like trees. I find they prefer roof sophets, abandon cars, mobile homes, old barns, and unused boats.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
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That depends on the map. If you go to google map and get a satellite picture of the area and print it off, it DOES have the trees on it.
How updated are these maps? Everytime I look up my place I get a picture from back in 2002.
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Papabear. All I can say to you is that you took a beautiful close up shot of your marked bee. I love to see the pictures that members put on the forum. Keep it up, best of luck with what you are trying to do. Have an awesome best of the great day. Cindi
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I guess I should clarify "triangulate"...
If one has a GPS, one can use a feature called "project waypoint" to find the
intersection of two or more flight vectors, and then use the GPS to find
that location, which certainly may not locate the exact tree, but gets you
close enough to where you can start looking around for bees doing their
thing near the hive entrance.
But you need not depend upon only a few vectors. You could keep
releasing bees, and use all the vectors, thereby locating multiple hives.
It is not at all unusual to find that some bees released fly away in
an unexpected direction, which may indicate that one has multiple
hives in the area being surveyed.
Fair warning, the following gets a bit "technical"...
If you use any GPS, you have a very accurate waypoint from which you
released each bee, and you have a fair-to-good estimate of the point at
which you lost sight of the bee, which you can walk to and mark as another
waypoint.
So, for each bee, you have a Longitude/Latitude where you released the
bee (x1, y1), and a Longitude/Latitude pretty near where you lost sight
of the bee (x2, y2). If you have another bee that appeared to be flying
in the same general direction, you can do some math to extend the vectors
to their intersection, as follows:
Do the following or each bee flight vector:
A = y2 - y1
B = x1 - x2
C = A*x1 + B*y1
To find the intersection of any two bee vectors,
you take the A, B, and C for each and find "D":
D = A1*B2 - A2*B1
And the intersection of the two flight vectors
(a possible hive location) is:
x intersection scalar = (B2 * C1 - B1 * C2) / D
y intersection scalar = (A1 * C2 - A2 * C1) / D
In all of the above:
"x" is always a longitude
and "y" is always a latitude
And you can map all the data on any mapping
system. If you don't have a mapping system,
you can plug your longitudes and latitudes into
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=google
and make a Google map.
So, all you really need to do is capture bees
with a beelining box and release them from
a reasonable spread of locations. Finding the
hives (or counting them) is a matter of simply
mapping enough data from enough bees.
When you have 3 bees all flying from a
bee-lining box from different locations
to the same general area, that area's
nearly certain to contain a hive.
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jfischer. OK, now I am done for the day. I am so tired from trying to understand your post that I think that I have to go back to bed and have a snooze.
Actually, what I am trying to say is that, good for you, you are fortunate that you can understand this type of information and impart it to others that may understand. I love how humans all have a little piece of this world that they are good at. Have an awesome day. Cindi
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I have a GPS and I think i can do this. Thanks for all the input.