Marking Bees

Hey everybody, I pleasantly stumbled upon this blog today and i’m glad to see this year’s Team Echinacea is up and running. Everything is looking good. The Flog is definitely proving to be a useful, as well as fun and interesting tool. I was a member of Team Echinacea last year as well as the Bee Team.
I recently got the chance to watch an experienced beekeeper mark a queen honey bee. The process was very quick and easy and I think could be tailored to use in the field in MN. There is a special container used for capturing and marking. A marking pen with special bee marking paint is used. There is no cooling involved. I’m going to try to find a website that explains this. The marking paint used by beekeepers is designed to last for the lifetime of the bees. Here is a video from youtube that demonstrates the marking of a queen bee.
I think that you guys should invest in some marking pens and look into getting other beekeeping equipment, at least just to see what is out there. Last year we didn’t really look into that stuff so we were just kind of reinventing the wheel.
-Jameson

Now you can get gallons of organic milk in Alexandria. I thought some of you would be interested

Ian and the blonde children

Categories in Pendragon CG Monitor Forms

i started this flog entry last year and never finished it. I’m just going to publish it as it is…

To streamline the process and get everyone on the same page i’m compiling photographs of all the different categories that we are noting in association with Echinacea plants.

Status
Can’t Find
Flowering

Basal
Staple
Dead Lvs (this year’s)
Blue Stake Only

Insects
aphids

ants

ant nest

egg sac

wht fuzzy

spittle

thorn hopper

beetle

grasshopper

leaf miner

????????????

pupa

rolled lf

Disease
yellow lf

purple lf

deformed lf

dead lf

Insect Damage
Nibbles

Holes

Wrinkles

1 lf minor
1 lf half-gone
1 lf gone

Other Damage
crisp lf

1 lf minor
1 lf half-gone
1 lf gone

1 mowed lf

1 burned tip

CGhead-info-07sub

Head Status
dud

no fls
broken off

crisp
bent
tilted
vertical developmnt, no hd

indented

normal

Insects on hd
aphids

ants

ant nest

white gunk

cat frass

egg sac

wht fuzzy

long-legged bug

larva

beetle

pupa

thorn hopper

spittle

grasshopper

Insect Damage
Nibbles

Disease (head)
no rays

whole hd weird

weird tufts

Echinacea slideshow

click here for the slideshow

Andy and the monster plant

We had a long afternoon of monitoring today. Andy and I worked together. On Andy’s turn to measure we got row 35, which just happens to contain the monster plant. This plant has by far the most flowering heads in the garden. This year it has 15 fully developed heads and 2 pips

It took about 40 minutes to record all the data on the plant.

The top head in this picture is a dud and the lower head is a pip.

Jennifer told me to take a picture of this inflorescence; so i did

Some more monitoring stuff

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Wu-tang cloud

The cameras were over-heating filming under the hot sun all day: so Andy bought hats for all of them to wear.

These pictures are from the afternoon of July 5th. We were taking pictures for fluctuating asymmetry to be analyzed later to see how ray floret shape affects pollination. that afternoon we saw a cloud that bore a strange resemblance to the wu-tang clan symbol

measuring stuff

white fuzzies

These are thorn hopper larvae. we have been calling them thorn hoppers. In the past they have been called black spikeys.

Below are close-ups of Echinacea leaf venation
this last one also has aphids as well as nibbles and holes

Here are my daily photos

this first one is actually from yesterday

KAP took the kite w/ camera up over the common garden today so they could fine tune the procedure and technique for getting good aerial photos. I took these photos as I was helping put staples in the garden and change camera batteries

The little black speck half-way up the kite string is the camera
Stuart was holding down the kite.
the common garden is kind of half garden half prairie.

these pictures are from monitoring/measuring/demography/demo of the common garden. Basically it means finding each and every plant in the common garden and measuring and recording every aspect of them

the internets are back

it’s been a whole week since we last had internet access at the Andes, and I have a lot of material to post. I have many many pictures to upload and many stories to tell, but I can’t do it all now. Anyway my posts from now on will probably not be in the order that the events actually happened. Here are some pictures i took today

this fly was on this head for a long time. I’m not exactly sure what it was doing. The anthers with the yellow pollen and the styles in the lowers rows are evident in these pictures

Flowering is winding down. This is one of the more photogenic of the heads that are done flowering

There are a few late plants that are just starting to flower. The may be the only one that is so late that looks normal. You can see one row of male florets on this flower. That means that this was the first day it flowered(mostly likely anyway).

here is head that hasn’t started flowering yet, but it’s not really normal. This has a condition that we call indented. In indented heads the middle of the head goes in (the head is concave), whereas normal heads are convex.

We saw a Robberfly today in the CG and I got some good pictures of it

here it is laying eggs into the spent florets on an Echinacea head.

here is a young head with an old one. In this picture the the open spent florets on the old head are large and easy to see.

Team Video

the internet is down at Andes! and it has been for a week. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. Hopefully today

Categories

Experiments

Marking Bees

Categories in Pendragon CG Monitor Forms

Echinacea slideshow

Andy and the monster plant

We had a long afternoon of monitoring today. Andy and I worked together. On Andy’s turn to measure we got row 35, which just happens to contain the monster plant. This plant has by far the most flowering heads in the garden. This year it has 15 fully developed heads and 2 pips

Jennifer told me to take a picture of this inflorescence; so i did

Some more monitoring stuff

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Some more monitoring stuff

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Wu-tang cloud

measuring stuff

the internets are back

Team Video

Please follow us:

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Experiments

Marking Bees

Categories in Pendragon CG Monitor Forms

Echinacea slideshow

Andy and the monster plant

We had a long afternoon of monitoring today. Andy and I worked together. On Andy’s turn to measure we got row 35, which just happens to contain the monster plant. This plant has by far the most flowering heads in the garden. This year it has 15 fully developed heads and 2 pips

Jennifer told me to take a picture of this inflorescence; so i did Some more monitoring stuff Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus We have been calling these ant nests And a another thorn hopper larvae

Some more monitoring stuff Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus We have been calling these ant nests And a another thorn hopper larvae

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests And a another thorn hopper larvae

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Wu-tang cloud

measuring stuff

the internets are back

Team Video

Please follow us:

Recent Posts

Archives

Jennifer told me to take a picture of this inflorescence; so i did

Some more monitoring stuff

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

Some more monitoring stuff

Here is a picture of a pupa case on an Echinacea; albeit out of focus

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae

We have been calling these ant nests

And a another thorn hopper larvae