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The best way to learn all the ins and outs of Insignia sampling is simply doing it. Flemming and Ole were so kind as to invite me and Valters to assist in the 5^th sampling. Due to mine and Valters agenda, the 5^th sampling in Denmark was brought forward to Thursday and Friday 4 and 5 July. It was an interesting learning experience for myself and Valters to prepare package and coding,  to do the pollen collection,  taking out and inserting respectively the old and new APIStrips and Beehold tubes, collecting beebread and emptying the pollen trap, to have an indication of the time and energy spent on the labour before and after the field work. I learned/ was confirmed that coding/ sample preparation requires a consequent and accurate effort, beebread picking takes time in two ways, looking for the best frame and the picking itself, the facility of the APIStrip and Beehold tube change and the every time wonderful view of the diversity of pollen in the trap.  All samples are stored in the freezer.

Just a reminder for sending the samples latest half July as described in the picture manual except alcohol on trapped pollen for PCR (and not for pesticide analyses).

Pollen identification
– trapped pollen for pollen identification are sent to Alice in alcohol 96%,
– Beehold tubes and beebread straws are sent, wrapped together with frozen icepacks in an insulating package of e.g. plastic foil with air bubbles or styrofoam box.

Pesticide residues
– APIStrips, Beehold tubes, trapped pollen and bee bread  are sent to the labs wrapped together with frozen icepacks from the freezer in an insulating package of e.g. plastic foil with air bubbles or styrofoam box.
– The division, where to send the samples for pesticide residue analyses will be announced in time.

Insignia recently got presented in the Latvian Beekeepers Magazine “Biskopis”. The association has 3.200 beekeepers, but even additional copies were distributed with the country. In total there are 4.200 beekeepers having 102.000 colonies. Main flow is oilseed rape, lime tree, clover, heather etc.
Latvia is an important part of the citizen science in year 2. Latvia is our most north situated beekeeping. Very mixed landscape, with lot of forest areas and intense farming.
Valters Brusbardis

Link to the beekeeper magazine

The main aim of INSIGNIA is the citizen science protocol for honeybee colony as bio-sampler for pesticides. But to reach that goal, loot of activities is going on. How to sample the pollen? In Denmark we have been working with a pollen and propolis group for 2 years already, when we got involved in INSIGNIA. All other countries used the famous front yellow pollen trap. All agreed on this is not the best one, but it works. For us, it was natural to follow our own route. The development of a new pollen trap that we got inspiration on in Switzerland. We did adjust it; we feel we did improve it and we did fit it to the Danish types of hives. We made a version 1, did test it all the summer and found mistakes. It was very exciting to involve the beekeepers in our project, and we talked hours about suggested improvements. We did recruit all our citizens scientist within this pollen group. With the INSIGNIA project we made a version 2. The one presented on the video. A very nice side-effect of the INSIGNIA project. See the result in this video.

The first samples from citizen scientists arrived in the labs of the national coordinators. Their next way is now to be send to the specialist labs for further analysis. It is of great importance that the samples arrive there in a well preserved and labelled manner!

Continue reading “Samples in the laboratory!”

In the INSIGNIA project, we do look very closely into the colonies as a natural part of the project. At the last sampling we found Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) in one of the INSIGNIA colonies. DWV is associated to a heavy varroa load. In this case we saw several bees with DWV, indicating that the colony did overwinter with to high mite load. Asking the beekeeper, we recognized that he has been experimenting last year using fewer treatments.  As new treatment he used oxalic acid evaporation in December. Normally we regard an oxalic acid tricking as very effective in the time of bloodless colonies. Either the evaporation was not effective or there was a relatively large amount of varroa in the colony end December. Normally we say that having DWV in the colony, it is too late to threat. Anyway, beekeeper decided to make a total brood removal in the colony, to see if it is possibly to make it healthy.
Flemming Vejsnæs

The inside view from colony 3 (see here for construction) explains why bees learn to get out through the exit tubes, but enter through the inside tubes!

The beehold tubes are used to sample substanced from bees entering the hive. They are placed for two weeks at the hive entrance of colony 1 and 3 with different adaptors (colony 1, colony 3).

INSIGNIA in Denmark are using production colonies. Spring this year has been very special. Early and very intense. Today was a 10 kg day, telling us that several Danish colonies did gain 10 kg of nectar during this one day of flow. This is unusual. We do already now see the first tendency of swarming condition in some colonies. So intense flow also indicate that we will get a swarm year.  Next sampling can start in 4 days.

The first sampling window was during the period of 9th to the 12th of May. The point is to kind of choose the good weather forecast day here in the springtime. We did choose Friday but must admit that Saturday would have been the perfect day. We had problems colleting enough pollen, but we did manage. And there are still problems to find surplus of pollen here in the springtime. Seem that it is all used for feed to the brood. We have a nice setup now, after lot of discussion and small changes. On good flight days we have to say that it is crowded at the beeholdtube entrances.
Take a look on the time-lapse video, we did shorten it down to 3 min, but in real life we talk about a sampling time of 30 min. At the end the bees were no so happy, since it was starting to get cloudy and windy. Take a look and get an impression on the work we do at year 1.
Flemming Vejsnæs

Some nice side effects are discovered within the insignia project. Due to the test setup, the entrance is restricted to an entrance of about 1,5 cm on the entrance. This works very nicely. The bees get used to it within few days. But if you are using an open bottom board, with a netting, making it possibly for the bees to interact, then we did see that some bees, that did not hit the entrance right away, did get stuck under the bottom board. If we did close the open bottom board the problem disappears or if we event made it impossibly for the bees to direct interact, the same happen. Continue reading “Problems – just needs to be solved!”