Monday, February 28, 2011

Prenolepis imparis on a Bee Hive

I noticed some winter ants, Prenolepis imparis, scurrying about one of our beehives today and decided to film a brief inspection. Beekeepers I talk to always seem annoyed with ant entering the hive. To be honest I'd say almost all of the ant species in the US don't do any harm. Most of them just enjoy the environment in the hive attic and use it to incubate their brood. A few of the wood nesting species though can do some damage to the hive but it's nothing compared to normal ware and tear of the wood from prying it open constantly. There are a few tropical species of ants that will kill a beehive but nothing for the local beekeeper to be concerned with. 

In this case the P. imparis workers were merely interested in nibbling at the propolis and bits of wax along the side. Ants use tree sap (propolis) as an antibacterial agent. They also have a fondness for the smell of honey I'm sure. I have never found P. imparis colonies to be more than a slight nuisance to my bee hives.  

Below the entrance to another hive the ants were inspecting dead bees the hive was tossing out. A lot of worker bees die over the year and it's natural to remove them from the hive where they're cleaned up by an assortment of ants each spring.

I'm happy to say both my hives are alive and collecting pollen, probably from the maple trees that have just started blooming.

Monarch Migration

I know a few people who work at the Shaw Nature Preserve, though I've never met them in person. The internet is great at connecting people with similar interests.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Justin Bieber's Hair = Money ... What?

Earlier this week on the Ellen Show, Justin Bieber was a guest and announced he was donating a lock of his hair to be auctioned off on E-Bay. 100% of the procedures go to fund a charity called "The Gentle Barn Foundation."

As of posting this the bids Here were up to $7,200.

Now I don't mean to criticize this, as I'm a fan of charity work. But, The Gentle Barn Foundation is self described as "Teaching people kindness and compassion to animals, each other and our planet," and their logo is a person feeding a cow by hand. So basically they're like a petting zoo. And I've found nothing on their website to suggest anything else.

Maybe they do work with special needs or something but I'm used to charities doing a little bit more than what this one does. Again that's not to say this is a bad thing, I'm just having trouble understanding how they're incapable of turning their own prophet. Do petting zoos turn a prophet?

"Our goal is to make 100,000 hugs possible within the next year," said Jay Weiner, president of The Gentle Barn. "We want everyone in our community to feel the healing effects of hugging a cow."

So ... Justin Bieber's hair is raising money for this organization to ... help people hug cows? or something ... What?

Friday, February 11, 2011

This Year's Plant List











Baptisia australis

Asclepias sullivantii

Prairie Moon Nursery




Aster oblongifolius

From Plant Delight Nursery


From Mulberry Woods Native Plant Nursery


Saturday, February 5, 2011

Early Spring Wildflower Videos

These are some of my favorite plants. They flower at a time of year most would consider insanely early. Some can be found blooming while there is still snow melting on the ground. They flower when bees might not even be awake or abundant and yet they do it anyway. They demonstrate that pollination doesn't require a beehive to happen. Many of the flowers probably aren't visited more than a dozen times and seeing bees working them is an uncommon sight. These are the tulips and daffodils of North America and it's insulting that almost no one plants let along recognizes them.

These videos are brought to you by SeaOtterSoup's youtube channel. I hope to contribute some of my own this spring. 

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Failed Attempts at Entomology

Over this past year I was hoping to enthrall readers with a how to in regard to black lighting for insects. My target audience though was going to be ants so I never got around to posting the info. Well after I'd made the thing I found that I wasn't getting any ants, where as in years past doing this in small scale I'd been able to get lots of ants, so clearly I must have been doing something wrong and that's why I never got around to posting this. Well it turns out there are two kinds of black lights and my larger setup used a weaker of the two despite being several feet longer. Hopefully I'll be able to fix this next year.

So here is my setup, illuminated with a spot light for photo reasons. Black lights don't illuminate well.

I experimented some with fabrics. All of these are white! But some don't illuminate well to a black light. However! Even the one that barely illuminated at all in the middle attracted insects. It has nothing to do weather or not the fabric glows, just so long as the light hits it. I was attracting the same general types of insects with everything.

As a side note I was completely disgusted to find my black light was illuminating "stains" on the sheets despite having never been used and coming from right out of the bag! I bought these at K-Mart and am hoping that's just a symptom of factory chemicals.

Insects showed up best on the whiter ones so I mostly used those. 

No idea which moth this is but I really like how smooth looking the wings are.



White Moth

Crain Fly. Might be a Giant Crain Fly. Not sure what the criteria is. 


Chinavia sp.

Soldier Beetle of some kind.

Ground nesting cockroach?

Lightning Bug in the spot light. Actually I think this mimicking a lightning bug.

Looks like a click bug.

Not sure what this is.

So those were the highlights of one year of doing this. I had it set up more than 6 times over the summer, always a day or two after it had just rained. Considering the high humidity I should have gotten more. And that's why this is a failure at Entomology. So at some point this year I'll hopefully buy a better light and have more to report back with.