Day 22, June 27, 2011 (learning experimental methods)

Dr. Harrington Wells and Dr. Abramson arrived and met us at the Bee Center this morning. Things kicked into gear right away. We all got into our research groups and started planning and setting up. We needed to train the bees to come to a specific sugar water food source. This was a very cool method. Start with some sugar water in a petri dish with some color tiles around it.
Place this on a small table right next to the hive. Bees start feeding, then move it a meter or so away. Wait a 1/2 or so and continue this, move further away from the hive over the course of a few hours and place the sugar supply where you want it. In this case a opening in a small pine grove.
The bees come to this spot. I am involved with 2 other students in doing behavior experiments. I will not go over the details now as we are still working on plans with Dr. Abramson. What we did do though was really interesting. We obtain bees from our feeder in the pine grove. Brought them back to the lab, placed them in a freezer until they stopped moving. Then we removed from their glass screw cap vials and taped them just under the head with a thin strip of duck tape. They were mounted on a bullet casing that had a piece cut away. You can see this in the pcs here. There is more I want to explain but I think that tomorrow I will have a much better feel for the process and report back. I need to get better videos and pics which I will do tomorrow to enhance my explainations.
Marisol is cutting thin strips of duck tape for the bullet ases

We made quite a few set ups

Amanda moving the sugar and bees a bit farther from the hive

Approaching the final destination with the sugar water and "trained" bees

Bees imobolized in the bullet casings

Feeding a contained bee sugar water before we leave for the day.

We will be working with these tomorrow. Start time 645 am.