Oregon Berry Bee Project

Cleaning Bees, Nov. 20, 2011

2011-12-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

We visited the Sturm Farms on November 20, 2011 to remove the bees from their nests and prepare them for the winter. This year we expected to clean lots of nests, so Jerry brought three cleaning machines. Jerry (far left), and John (far right) spent most of the day cleaning nests. In the morning, Rosie (center) also helped on the middle machine. Eric Mader from the Xerces Society joined us to see how it's done. In the afternoon, Mike, the project engineer, visited, and Glen (center) manned the machine.

In the 2011 season we were interested in increasing Osmia lignaria populations as well as O. aglaia, and that created a problem for cleaning out the bees. Although the two bees typically use different diameter nesting holes, apparently many of the O. lignaria were small enough to nest in the O. aglaia Binderboard. That presented a problem cleaning the bees, because we wash the O. lignaria cocoons to remove dirt and other debris and to wash off mites, whereas we don't wash O. aglaia cocoons. There was also a risk that if the bees nest together, mites will transfer to O. aglaia cocoons. We haven't seen mites on O. aglaia before.

We saw few if any mites on the O. lignaria nests, and didn't see any on O. aglaia. There were only a few Binderboard that had nests of both species. However, there were quite a few O. lignaria cocoons infected with Monodontomerus parasitic wasps. I removed as many as I could identify from the washed cocoons. Our final yield of O. lignaria was only 1.25 cups of cocoons with about 236 females per cup. Females were 35% of the cocoons. That means our total yield of females was about 300, enough to pollinate an acre of fruit trees, in theory. Compare that with a yield of 420 females from Sturm farms in 2010 that were released in spring 2011. To that we added about 90 additional females from other sources in Portland. That means our yield was about 58% of last year's yield. Not good.

The O. aglaia did not fare much better. Last season we removed about 31 cups of cocoons from the nests, with and estimated 21,700 bees. We did not try to estimate sex ratio. This year our total yield was about 10.3 cups, with about 650 cocoons per cup. That's only 6,700 cocoons total, 31% of last year's yield. Many of those cocoons had larvae in them that had not fully developed into adults. That suggests that the summer was not warm enough for the bees to complete development. We had the Sturms leave the cocoons in their garage for a month or so, in hopes that the temperatures would be warmer than on the porch where the cocoons have overwintered in the past. Hopefully more of the cocoons will complete development.
Why such a poor bee yield in the 2011 season. Certainly the cold, wet, late season must have had an impact. But perhaps the high numbers of honey bees also had an impact. There may not have been enough pollen for everyone.

Don says that the berry yields suffered from disease this past season, but the black raspberry had good pollination. Perhaps the presence of our managed native bees had a positive impact on the pollination, even if they did not reproduce as well as we would like.

Black Raspberry Bloom, 2011 Part 5

2011-07-04T16:21:00.000-07:00

The morning of June 17 was sunny, and the Osmia aglaia finally came out of their emergence containers and started foraging, mating, and searching for nests. In previous posts I've discussed their foraging on black raspberries and other flowers in the sturm fields. As temperatures warmed, there was lots of activity in the shelter. It's impossible to capture a sense of that activity in a still shot, but perhaps you can get an idea from this photo showing bees checking out empty tunnels in the webcam shelter. Three were crawling around on the bottom board, and click on the image to see bees in tunnels on the upper board.
The bees spent quite a bit of time sunning on the ground around the shelter; I even saw some sunning amongst the blueberry plants.

Here's an O. aglaia couple mating on a black raspberry leaf. Usually mating takes place early in the life of the bees, so this is further evidence that the O. aglaia had probably not yet started nesting.

We added some additional Binderboard nests to the shelters before we left. Here's the webcam shelter on June 17 after adding the additional nests. Before we left we put the lids back on the emergence containers and moved them to the sides of the shelter.

We also added more Binderboard nests to the Marion Berry shelter before we left.

One last thing that I should mention. After taking one last ride around the farm to see if there was any O. aglaia activity yet at Jim Cane's shelters (none seen) we saw Don's beekeeper setting up more honey bee hives just east of our marion berry shelter. There were 10 hives with a total of 24 supers. This makes a total of 29 honey bee hives in Don's fields. That's a large number. It will be interesting to find out if they have impact on our O. aglaia reproduction this season.

Black Raspberry Bloom, 2011 Part 4

2011-07-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

Eric Mader from the Xerces Society in Portland, OR, contacted me in May. He explained that "Xerces has some funding (through a national NRCS grant) to work with various specialty crop producers in different regions of the country to develop bee habitat on their farms. For the most part this consists of restoring native flowering plants that compliment crop bloom times by providing additional pollen and nectar resources.
"We have some additional funds to field test this same strategy with a berry grower here in western Oregon and Washington, and I wanted to check with you to see if this might be a useful opportunity to compliment your existing Osmia aglaia project?"
Naturally, I suggested that the Sturm Farm might be interested in participating, but it wasn't until my visit to the Sturm Farm in June that I was able to arrange for Don and Eric to meet. Fortunately Eric was available on short notice to come out to Corbett the afternoon of June 16.
It turns out that Don already has an NRCS grant for wildlife plantings, so the Xerces grant will supplement it and provide some guidance on the most suitable bee-friendly plants. Don had a meeting at 1pm that afternoon with the local NRCS representative, and then he hurried back to the farm to meet Eric at 3pm. Eric showed up with another Xerces staff member, plant ecologist Brianna Borders. By then the clouds had cleared and the sun was out. Don loaded us into his truck for a quick tour of his 140 acres of berries, including all of the O. aglaia shelters.
Here we are at Jim Cane's central bee shelter near the marion berries. Don is on the right in white shirt; Eric is in the center with Brianna behind him, and my husband John is on the left. Notice that we moved the bee nests from the pallets on the right to the new wood shelter. If the bees had been active this would not have been a good idea, because they would not have found the new nest location. But since the bees were not yet active, it was a good time for the move.
Don and Eric decided that this location would be the best place on the farm for bee-friendly plantings. It's central location will make it accessible to bees from other parts of the farm, and this open area will be easy to cultivate. in preparation for planting.
In addition to checking out the nest sites for O. aglaia, we spent a little time seeing who was visiting the black raspberry. There seemed to be far fewer bumble bees in the afternoon than in the morning, when it was overcast and cold. I had collected a few of the bumble bees that I saw in the morning, and Eric identified the more common species as either Bombus melanopygus or mixta, and the less common species as B. vosnesenskii (see photo of this species in Part 2 of the posts on black raspberry bloom).
We also noticed a neat hole at the end of a prunned raspberry cane. Eric used his pen knife to slit the cane open, and there we found a couple of Ceratina sp., the small carpenter bee. This genus makes it's nest by burrowing into pithy stems such as Rubus canes and dead common mullein stems. One has to cut the stems so the pith is accessible to the bees. After creating a nest with a series of offspring cells in the stem, the mother Ceratina bee guards the entrance of the nest and periodically checks on her developing offspring, according to a thesis from University of Georgia in the 1970s. There were two bees in this tunnel, and not much of a nest, so I suspect that these bees were just beginning to nest. Don says that he leaves the prunned canes in the black raspberry but not other berry varieties. I recommended that he cut the brown stems of last year's common mullein stalks that are found around the edge of the farm so there are more nesting sites for Ceratina. There are some in the Himalayan blackberry patch where Jim Cane's mail tote shelters are located. Ceratina is probably a good raspberry pollinator, and it would be great to increase their populations.
Hopefully Eric and Don are moving forward on this project. Maybe we can get some photos of the site as it is planted on this blog. Eric is also hoping that we can have a farm field day next spring to showcase the bee plantings and alternative bees.

Black Raspberry Bloom, 2011 Part 3

2011-07-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

As discussed in the two previous posts, our shelters had quite a bit of activity of both Osmia lignaria and Osmia aglaia, especially on the sunny morning of June 17. Meanwhile, Dr. Jim Cane from the USDA ARS Bee Labs in Logan, UT, had introduced quite a few of his O. aglaia in different parts of the berry fields. What was happening in them?

One of Jim's shelters is located in the center of the berry fields, close to our central shelter near the marion berries. When we first checked it out, the bee nests were in cardboard boxes sitting on a stack of pallets with a board as a roof on top. Next to the nests was a new shelter that Don's father built. Don hadn't yet had time to move the nests. We did not see any bee activity at this shelter.

Last year all of Jim's bees were released in the southwest corner of Don's field, next to a large patch of Himalayan blackberry (see last year's posts). They were released in several of Jim's mail tote shelters. This year three mail tote shelters are back, flanked on either side by one of Don's dad's wood shelters. The first photo shows the shelters from the west end looking east, the second photo shows the shelters at the east end looking west. The straws with bees are all in the wood shelters. We saw no O. aglaia activity in these shelters, but we did see a couple of O. lignaria working on nests in the wood shelter in the farthest southeast corner (first photo). As of June 17, the Himalayan blackberry had lots of buds but no bloom.

The last set of shelters is also at the west end of the farm, but further north, across a wide valley full of Himalayan blackberry. There are some commercial berries in this field, as well as Don's Christmas trees. At this site there are two of Don's dad's wooden shelters, as well as a shelter consisting of cardboard boxes on pallets with a roof on top.

Here's the view from the center shelter, looking over the valley that is totally covered in Himalayan blackberry. No one walks into that thicket. Across the valley you can see the power lines where Don's main fields are located. The white line next to a spruce tree to the right of center is the honey bee hives shown in the previous post. These photos were taken on the morning of June 16 when it was still overcast and cold.

This and the next photo were taken on the morning of June 17 when the sun was out, and there was lots of O. aglaia activity in our shelters. However, there was very little activity in Jim's shelters. If there had been, sunning bees would have been visible on the floor of the shelter.

No activity seen in a close up of the emergence box of filled nests on the left, or in the bee boards on the right.

We did see O. lignaria in this third set of shelters. Some of the bees were hiding under the wood shingles of the roof. One is seen in the center of the first photo. Can you see the two in the second photo? They look superficially like flies, but they are O. lignaria. One is on the board on the right, the other seen from the side, between the boards.

Black Raspberry Bloom, 2011 Part 2

2011-06-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

In this post I'll address these questions:

-Does O. aglaia forage from black raspberry?
-What other bees forage from black raspberry?
-What other flowers does O. aglaia visit, and what else was available to them on the Sturm farm?

Notice that I won't say what's pollinating the raspberry leading to mature fruit. In many cases when bees visit a flower, they pollinate it, but not always. The only way to be sure would be to carefully control the visits that a flower gets by particular bee species, and then to follow the flower through fruit development.

When the sun poked tentatively through the clouds on the morning of June 16, the first foraging O. aglaia that we saw were visiting white clover and dandelion. These were the closest flowers to the webcam shelter. The O. aglaia seemed to be taking nectar but not pollen.

Sorry about the blurry image. It documents that O. aglaia foraged from dandelion. (Actually, on second thought this looks like it might be Agapostemon or Augochlora! - July 20)

When the afternoon turned sunny, we saw O. aglaia on the black raspberry flowers! They move rapidly, so they are hard to photograph on the flowers, but I managed to get a few photos of the foraging females. The first female is visiting a bud that is just starting to open.

I'm pretty sure that's a nectar visit. According to McGregor (Insect Pollination of Cultivated Crop Plants, Agriculture Handbook No. 496, 1976): "When the flower opens, the anthers are immature, with the filaments bent over the immature styles. Subsequently, the outer stamens bend back toward the petals and their anthers dehisce. As dehiscence progresses toward the center of the flower, the receptacle expands, the styles grow, and the receptive stigmas appear at their tips; later, the anthers nearest the stigmas dehisce, and, if cross-pollination has not already been brought about by insects, some selfing may result. The degree of such selfing seems to vary with species and cultivar, but most of them are largely self-sterile."

It's hard to be sure from this photo, but it is possible that there is a little pollen on the underside of the abdomen of this bee. We looked hard to try to determine if there was pollen in the scopae of bees returning to the nests, but did not see any either on foraging bees or on bees returning to the nests. I suspect that the O. aglaia were just beginning to search for nesting sites at this time.

A variety of other weeds were available in the area around our bee shelters, but none as abundant as white clover and dandelion. In addition, there were two crop species near the webcam shelter. South of the shelter was a small strawberry patch with blooms as well as immature and ripe berries. Just east of the strawberries were some blueberry plants in bloom. See the earlier post about bee introduction in May. On June 17, a sunny day, I saw few bees visiting the blueberry: especially compared with raspberry visitation. There were a few bumble bees. I saw some O. aglaia sunning on the ground in the blueberry patch, and I'm pretty sure that a couple of them flew up to the blueberry flowers, but I didn't get a good look at them.

Here's a photo from the west side of the Sturm fields. The white shapes on the left are honey bee hives.

Don doesn't pay anything to get honeybees in his berry fields. Rather, he works with a beekeeper who is happy to bring hives to Don's field because of the absence of insecticide sprays. On June 16 I counted 19 hives with a total of 50 supers in this row near the west end of the fields. Then on June 17, the beekeeper added 24 more supers in 10 hives closer to the marion berries where our second Osmia shelter is located. I hope that's all that were brought to the field. The honey bees are likely to have an impact on the growth of the O. aglaia population.

Bombus vosnesenskii is one of the species of bumblebees foraging on the black raspberry.
She is apparently only taking nectar, because there does not appear to be any pollen on the corbicula of her hind leg.

In addition to the honey bees and bumble bees, we observed a few ground nesting bees foraging on the black raspberry on June 17. The morning was sunny, though the temperature was only 55oF. These included some small Lasioglossum (Dialictus), and possibly an Andrena.
Visitors to the black raspberry seemed to change with the weather. The morning of June 16 there seemed to be equal numbers of honey bees and bumblebees in the cool, overcast weather. That afternoon when the sun came out the bumble bees became much less abundant.
We decided to quantify the numbers. At 5:45pm John and I each counted bee visits to 6 inflorescences of black raspberry close to the webcam shelter for 15 minutes. The temperature was 65oF, and the sky was overcast. John counted 10 honey bee visits and one visit by a Lassioglossum or Andrena (on 11 young open flowers, 41 total flowers in 6 inflorescences). On a different patch of 6 inflorescences I counted 19 honey bee visits (on 10 young open flowers, 73 total flowers in 6 inflorescences).
We repeated the counts on the morning of June 17. The temperature was 55oF, the sky was sunny. We started our 15 minute counts at 10:17am. John counted 23 honey bee visits, 2 O. aglaia visits, 2 Lasioglossum and 1 fly visit (on 10 young open flowers, 49 total flowers in 6 inflorescences). I counted 27 honey bee visits, 12 O. aglaia visits, and 6 Lasioglossum visits (on 17 young open flowers, 38 total flowers in 6 inflorescences). . We saw a few bumble bees, but bumble bees were much less abundant than they had been on the cold morning, and they did not show up in our counts.

One mystery that we never solved: What were the Osmia lignaria visiting? They were active at the shelter, even in the cold June 16 morning. They seemed to fly toward the blueberries, but I did not see them foraging on blueberries or raspberries. The nearby maple trees had developing fruit, so they were not attracting bees. So, it's not clear if the blue orchard bee was contributing to pollination of any berries.

Black Raspberry Bloom, 2011 Part 1

2011-06-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

John and I visited the Sturms on June 16 and 17, soon after the black raspberry started to bloom. Marion berry was also in bloom, as seen in this photo from the center of the fields.

The previous week had seen a couple of sunny days which brought out the bloom, but for the most part, the weather had been cold and damp all spring. Sun was predicted when we set out for Corbett, but on the morning of June 16 it was still overcast, with a temperature of 52oF at 10:24am.
When we got to the shelter next to the webcam (not yet functional), the first thing we did was remove the lids from the Osmia aglaia emergence containers and move them to the front of the shelter, in hopes that the bees would warm up quicker and fly. There were lots of emerged adult O. aglaia amidst the frass in the containers. It amazes me that they were still alive, since they probably had only one or two days of good weather since they had emerged about a month earlier. But the morning of the 16th they were not doing much. Here's what the shelter looked like after we arrived and opened the containers.
As the morning started to warm, O. aglaia began to appear from under the floor of the shelter where apparently quite a few bees, especially males like these, were hiding. Osmia lignaria (the big black bee sitting on the container lid) were more active than O. aglaia, but they also spent much of their time resting or waiting for the sun.

It's amazing to see these large female O. lignaria coming out of the small tunnels. Rosie had told us that the O. lignaria were using many of the smaller diameter tunnels, though larger tunnels are available. They seem to prefer the tunnels at the bottom of the Binderboard. The plugged tunnels are O. lignaria.

Our second stop was the shelter in the center of the fields, near the marion berries. The photo at the top of this post was taken from that shelter. It has only two O. aglaia emergence containers. Here we also opened the emergence containers to encourage the bees to fly. The O. lignaria were active.

A closeup of the O. aglaia Binderboard shows an O. aglaia abdomen in one of the nest tunnels. However, most of the plugs in these 1/4" tunnels are O. lignaria plugs of chunky mud.

The O. lignaria Binderboard in this shelter already has 43 plugged nests out of 98 available. Probably the unplugged tunnels have nests under construction.

Despite the cool, overcast conditions, there were lots of bees flying on the black raspberries, though they were not the Osmia. We saw plenty of honey bees and at least two species of bumble bees. There were bees flying fast above the berry bushes, too fast to identify. However, when I caught them with my net, they turned out to be bumblebees.

More about our visit to Corbett in the next post...

Bees in the field, May 10, 2011

2011-06-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

Rosie sent me an e-mail on May 10 with this message: Hi Karen
Put some out yesterday and the rest today. Everybody wants out so I hope ok. Black rasp. not in bloom yet. Blues real real close nice day would do it I was standing at shelter when I took the pictures of the fields close by. Some dandelions by shelter they are thick this year. Need to put out rest of nests for them also.
Rosie

Both Osmia lignaria and O. aglaia were coming out of their cocoons despite the lousy weather and lack of raspberry bloom, so it was time to get them into the field. The photos are from her cell phone. At the top are two images from the shelters in the raspberry fields showing the nests and emergence containers with bees coming out. Below is a close up of the O. aglaia cocoons and adults in one emergence container (actually, a cottage cheese container with an emergence hole).

Rosie saw blue orchard bees on the dandelions in bloom near the shelter. Here's a male O. lignaria.
The black raspberries that were in the field east of our main bee shelter, where the webcam is located, were pulled out last fall. Don Sturm is planning to plant blueberries in this field, although he says he will plant some black raspberries close to the bee shelter so we can see them from the webcam.

Some blueberries have already been planted at the far east end of the field, and 100 yards southeast of the bee shelter. The rectangle of lighter colored soil on the right side of this picture is the closest blueberry field. As you can see, there was plenty of mud available for the orchard bees that day.

The blueberry plants were in bloom in May, along with the dandelion. I think there is an orchard bee in one of the flowers on the right side of the plant, an inflorescence under the dandelions. It would be nice if the orchard bees proved to be good blueberry pollinators.

Logan Bee Labs 2010 work at Sturm's Berry Farm

2011-03-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

I should have posted this last spring and fall, but haven't had a chance. Better late than never. As we head into the spring 2011 season, it will be helpful to recall what was done last year.

Dr. Jim Cane from the USDA Bee Labs in Logan Utah has been studying Osmia aglaia for a number of years. Last season he had several of his bee mail shelters in the Sturm fields. We saw them in action in early June of 2010 (see last year's post from June 4). In this photo you can see three of the four shelters at the edge of the Sturm field. John is standing by a white shelter, and beyond are two blue shelters (visible in the larger version of this image that you can open by clicking on it.) To the right at the edge of the Sturm field is a large patch of Himalayan blackberry, a few days before bloom. To the left are the Sturm raspberries in bloom, but in need of some sun to bring on the bees. The Sturm fields extend off in the distance past the power lines.

Jim asked us to cover the openings of the shelters with plastic mesh to keep out bird predators. Here's what the shelters looked like inside both before and after covering. It was an overcast day for the most part, but the first day without rain in a couple of weeks. The blue shelters were darker than the white and yellow shelters. The yellow shelter showed the most signs of bee activity.

Note that there are a couple of bees sunning on the floor of the white shelter, but nothing in the blue shelter. The yellow shelter has a ring of dirt around the floor (Jim, from 2010 or previous years?), and there are a bunch of males waiting on the milk carton of filled straws for sufficient warmth to fly.

In fact, while we were covering the shelters with mesh, the sun burned through the haze just enough to warm the bees. This was the first time the sun had been out in days, and it didn't stay out long. But during that time we saw male O. aglaia sunning and foraging a little on the raspberry flowers.

Jim tells me that by fall 2010 he recovered 24,000 live O. aglaia, and would have had 8000 more but for the unwaxed new straws that the manufacturer sent (provision moisture wicked into the straw, leaving a provision mass that was dry). (Not a problem in our wood Binderboard).

Still, it's clear that these bees are doing well on the berry farm. Question is, did they pollinate the commercial raspberries as welll as the Himalayan blackberry?

2010 Osmia aglaia yields

2010-11-26T23:06:00.000-08:00

We returned to Sturm Berry Farm last Saturday, November 20, to clean the Binderboard and see how the Osmia aglaia fared this past season. Jerry brought his cleaning machine, but John and Glen cleaned quite a few nests by hand. We saw very few parasites, resin bees, or other undesirable intruders. One board had some white mold in the center. There may be some cocoons from other local species of Osmia with similar nest construction. However, we are not concerned about them, because they may be good berry pollinators, so they are welcome. Basically, we were quite pleased with the yield of bees.

We removed 31 cups of cocoons, with an average of about 700 cocoons per cup, for a total of about 21,700 cocoons for next year! That’s quite impressive considering that the O. aglaia were not able to do much foraging for several weeks at the beginning of the season. This year we saw a 2.7 fold increase in our bees. We had about 4000 empty tunnels for approximately 4000 females. We might have been able to raise even more cocoons for next year if we had more nests to put out. This spring we are going to need about 10,000 tunnels to accommodate all of the females that we expect from this year’s bee yield.

We had an average of 4.6 cocoons per tunnel in the nests close to the webcam and black raspberry patch, and 4.2 cells per tunnel in the nests under the tower in the center of the field, near the marionberry.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that pollination on the black raspberry was very poor last spring. O. aglaia activity was too late. Though I saw bumblebees and honeybees foraging on the black raspberry at the end of May, there apparently wasn’t enough activity from them to do much pollination. Since black raspberry is the most difficult variety to pollinate, and the main reason that we originally wanted to try O. aglaia, it’s looking like the berry bee is not going to be as useful as we hoped, at least in a year with a cold, wet spring.

So, we are planning to put O. lignaria in the black raspberry shelter next spring, in hopes that they will emerge early and forage from the early raspberries when the berries come into bloom. O. lignaria should be more active in cool weather. If they prove useful for black raspberry, we should be able to increase their numbers. Meanwhile, we will use O. aglaia to pollinate berry varieties that bloom at the same time and after Himalayan blackberry.

Pollination at Sturm Berry Farm

2010-06-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

This has been a slow spring for raspberry pollination. It's been raining nearly every day for several weeks, or so we've heard. John and I made our visit to Corbett last Sunday because it was the only day all of last week and this week that rain was not predicted. We hoped for some sun, and got perhaps a hazy hour or two, but most of the day was overcast. Temperatures were in the low to mid 60s during our visit.

The first photo is of black raspberry flowers. They are not very showy. Petals are small. This inflorescence had 6 flowers on it, more than most inflorescences. The flowers have many stamens wiht brown anther sacs in a circle around a cluster of white pistils in the center. I expect (though I didn't have time to observe) that most honey bees go after nectar from the side rather than from the top. That would limit their ability to move pollen from stamens to stigmas. Yet the flowers are getting pollinated. The flower in the middle is clearly developing a fruit.

This inflorescence gives a good indication of where we are in pollination. One flower with a developing fruit, one flower at the top right has lost it's petals and will probably show a developing fruit in a few days, two or three flowers are in full bloom with anthers in various stages of presenting pollen.

Here's a view of several rows of black raspberry in bloom. Can you tell it's in bloom? From this distance you can just make out small clusters of flowers in the closest bushes, if you know that they are flowers.

Despite the poor weather bumble bees and honey bees were busy foraging all day on Sunday. Rosie commented that the bumble bee population on their farm seems to have been increasing in the last couple of years. There are no honey bee hives on the Sturm farm this year, but honey bees have been coming in from elsewhere. My guess is that the bumble bees and honey bees are responsible for most of the pollination on the farm this year. I saw a few tiny halictids on the berry flowers as well, but they were mostly taking nectar from the side of the flowers, so probably not doing much pollination. The O. aglaia have not been very active as far as I can tell - more on that later.

Compare the black raspberry with marion berry flowers. The petals are much larger and showier, and the flowers can be seen from a distance away on the shrubs (photo below). The blackberries bloom a little later than the raspberries, but they are in full bloom now, and getting multiple visits from bumble bees and honey bees. There is even an ant crawling around on the lowest marion berry flower in this close-up.

Rosie put out a shelter with more of our Binderboard and O. aglaia next to the marion berries (scroll down to see photo). Something has been getting at the bees - maybe a humingbird? We covered the entrance to try to deter predators.

Our webcam set-up

2010-06-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here are three views of the webcam in situ in the Sturm's raspberry field. As planned, the shelter, camera and solar panel that powers the battery for the camera are all sitting under a huge powerline tower. The bushes around the shelter are black raspberry.

The webcam resides in the white box between the bee shelter on the left (north) and the solar panel on the right (south). The white box provides protection to the camera from the elements. Mike built the box in his shop in Seaside, OR. Great job, Mike! You can see the black dome around the camera poking out underneath the box in the second photo. The camera can move 360 degrees to view all around the area. Most of the time we are interested in viewing the shelter, or the raspberry bushes nearby.

Don Sturm built the shelter. This one is quite cozy compared with the old apple crate that we were using last year. There is plenty of room for nests and bees, and lots of protection. We need to be careful that it isn't used by rodents, birds, or larger critters.

To help keep out unwanted vertebrates we purchased some screening from the local Home Depot and installed it over the opening to the shelter with pushpins and nails. Mice, spiders, wasps, and other small creatures can still get in, but at least hummingbirds and jays will be detered. Hopefully also racoons or possums, though they can probably chew through or pull off the screening if they want in. All the more reason for us to be able to monitor with the webcam!

If Rosie wants to get access to the nests or emergence boxes, she can take the mesh off of the nails holding it in place on the left.

Hummingbird Feeder??!!

2010-06-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

We were playing with the webcam from the Sturm computer on Sunday morning, when all of a sudden, something blurry flew into the shelter. It took us a couple of seconds to realize that it was a hummingbird! OMG, I've never seen a hummingbird at a bee shelter before! Jays and woodpeckers are always a threat, and screening is recommended if bird predation is a problem. But hummingbirds?

We hadn't yet figured out that we can capture and save the webcam images, so I tried to photograph the computer screen to document this visit. See the blurry light blob just right of the left-most cottage cheese container - emergence box? That's the hummingbird. It was the best that I could do.

She didn't stay long. I think this little bird was a female because I didn't see any flashy metallic male colors, although the light may not have been right in the shelter. We watched her stick her long beak into a couple of entrances in the Binderboard, and then into the holes of the emergence boxes. We couldn't tell if she found any bees to snack on, but she certainly could have been eating them. It's also possible that she thought these were hummingbird feeders and she was looking for nectar.

We only saw the one visit, never saw her in person at the shelters. Before leaving the farm we covered the shelter with vinyl mesh to keep the birds out. Hopefully it will keep out our little hummingbird and her friends. Sorry hummers, these bees are not for you!

Webcam images at Sturms Berry Farm

2010-06-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 30 we spent the day at the Sturms' Berry farm to see how the bees and flowers are doing.

First, Rosie showed us what the webcam images look like on their computer. Here's John in their office, with an image of the raspberry bushes from the webcam. We could see the branches moving in the breeze. The images are great! I gather that the problem resides in the router. Mike has tried two different routers, one white and one black just to the right of the computer screen. Mike purchased the black router with the silver band around it. The internet provider, rconnects, sent the white route. But neither communicates with any computer except Don's. ARG!!! Any suggestions from our readers?
Here's a closer look at the computer monitor with the webcam image, this time showing into the bee shelter. A bit of the raspberries are visible to the right of the bee shelter. Below the image are easy tools to get the camera to pan and zoom in or out, right or left. A scroll bar on the right side of the image will move the camera up and down.
In this image we can see the status of the nests. No plugs yet. There was very little bee activity because it was overcast and chilly.

We can zoom in close enough to get a good view of the nest entrances. If any bees had been sitting there waiting for the sun, we would have seen them. The big yellow circle in the top left is a yellow push pin - Steve's idea - to give the bees something to orient to.

We were able to capture images from the webcam and e-mail them to me. It took a couple of days for them to show up in my in-box. The resolution is not great, but good enough for this blog.
Here's one of the images, another close up of bee nests in the shelter. Note that the top of the image has information about when and where the image was captured.

Next: Hummingbird feeder!

Bloom time, 2010

2010-05-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

Sadly, we don't yet have a functional webcam for watching the bees. Mike says it's a problem with the internet server; Rosie is looking into changing servers.
Meanwhile, I'm on break from teaching biology at the College of Western Idaho, so we are taking a day to visit Corbett to see how the bees are doing. Rosie says it's been cold and rainy since the bees started to emerge. We hope they are still alive!
Jim Cane visited the Sturms a few weeks ago and set up a shelter with about 1,000 additional bees from his collection. I look forward to seeing them as well. He says there were lots of small carpenter bees, genus Ceratina, foraging on the weeds at that time (before raspberry bloom). I hope to see them today as well.
John and I drove up to Mosier, OR last night and spent the night at the Mosier House Bed and Breakfast. We recommend it if anyone reading this is planning a visit to the Columbia Gorge. Thanks to Cindy, our hostess, for a wonderful breakfast, and for keeping such a beautiful B & B.

Next... Bloom at the Sturms'.

Waiting for the Berry Season to Begin

2010-04-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

The webcam is in place, as it the solar panel to power it. We are waiting for some technical details to be resolved before the webcam will be available on line. Soon, we hope.

Meanwhile, Rosie contacted me yesterday about the Osmia aglaia. They were out of town over the weekend. Before leaving she checked the containers of bee cocoons, and nothing had emerged yet. But the weekend weather was warm and apparently sometime over the weekend some of the O. aglaia started to emerge. She found them yesterday shortly after returning home. So, they have been moved to the refrigerator. There's no raspberry bloom yet on the farm. Blueberries should bloom soon. Meanwhile, a cold front came through and temperatures are back to the 40s and 50s, with some rain expected during the week.

Preparing Berry Bees for the Winter

2009-12-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

Jerry, John, Glen and I visited Sturm Berry Farm on November 18 to see how the Osmia aglaia fared during the summer, to prepare the cocoons for winter storage and to clean the Binderboard® nests so they are ready to go out next spring.

Rosie removed the Binderboard® from the field in late September or October and stored them. When we arrived at the farm at 9:30am she met us with the Binderboard® in her truck, and escorted us to the garage of their house where we set up tables and equipment for the operation.

At first glance, the Binderboard® from the main shelter (under the power lines, see “Our Project Begins”, April 27) did not seem to have filled very well. Only about 25% of the tunnels were plugged at the surface. But when I put the board in the sun and looked down the tunnels, I realized that most had plugs recessed about a centimeter deep, and all of the boards from the main shelter were nearly full! Jerry was delighted. He has spent too much time cleaning Binderboard® that are only partially filled, and notes that it takes about as long to clean a partially filled board as a full one.

This photo shows two adjacent laminates that have been opened in Jerry’s cleaning machine. Some of the cocoons stuck to the top laminate, and some to the bottom laminate. In the fourth row from the left, all 9 cocoons stuck to the top laminate. Note that the mother bee left a small intercalary cell between the two innermost cocoons, and a small vestibular cell above the outermost cocoon. Intercalary cells have plugs on both end, but they are empty. Vestibular cells are also empty, except they are just behind the nest plug, the vestibule of the nest entrance, as it were.

The other nests between these two laminates had fewer cocoons, and intercalary cells were common. The middle tunnel, for example (7th from either side) has intercalary cells between each of the first 4 cocoons, then three adjacent cocoons, then a large vestibular cell just below the plug. I’m using the names that Karl Krombein gave to the parts of twig-nesting solitary bee and wasp nests in his ground-breaking book “Trap-nesting Wasps and Bees”.

Some of the cocoons contain adult O. aglaia, but some of the cocoons, more reddish in color, contained live prepupae, the final instar larvae. More on them in a future blog.

Rosie is getting a close look at Jerry’s cleaning machine in action. It mainly provides support for long Binderboard®, holding them in place during the cleaning process. Jerry is using a hand-held scraper to remove cocoons from all 13 tunnels per laminate in one motion. Actually, he is taking two swipes, one from the top to the center, and one from the bottom to the center. All the cocoons fall into the blue pan at the bottom. When the cocoons have been removed, Jerry moves the blue pan out of the way and replaces it with the grey pan. He uses a paint brush about the width of the laminate to brush bleach water on the laminates, and uses several scrub brushes to remove debris from the tunnels. The waste bleach water and debris fall into the grey pan. Then Jerry uses gripping teeth to open and lock into place the next two laminates. The gripping teeth are visible in the photo of the nests, above. In the view to the left you can see the cleaned laminates loop back around under the red shelf that holds the filled laminates.

The Binderboard® give us a good view of the nests, and Jerry’s platform speeds the process of cleaning the boards and preparing them for the next season. We were able to clean all of the boards at the Sturm farm in one 7 hour day with only one person scraping the nests. If bee populations continue to increase, this hand cleaning process could take more time than a grower wants to put into managing bees. Jerry hopes to add a motor to control the scraper and automate the cleaning process. That should cut down the time to process large numbers of bee cocoons and save the grower time and money.

Once the cocoons have been removed, it’s time to estimate our yield. Here’s Glen counting out cocoons in a ½ cup sample. We took 3 such samples. There isn’t much dimorphism between the sexes in size of the cocoons, unlike Osmia lignaria, so for this species we haven’t bothered calculating a sex ratio. However, we could by opening a small sample of cells to see what’s inside.

We found that there was an average of 310 cocoons per half cup, plus 17 cocoons with prepupae, about 5%.

Once the boards have been cleaned, we brought them into the heated mud room next to the garage to dry out.

At the end of the day we replaced the bolts and wing nuts, and tightened them as far as possible. The Sturms should tighten them more in a few days, and again in the spring when the bees are released.

And here is our final yield, divided among 8 cottage cheese containers, each holding a little over 1.5 cups of cocoons for a total of 13 cups. At 600 cocoons per cup, that’s an estimated 7,800 total cocoons. We released about 1500 O. aglaia cocoons raised on Sturm farm last spring, as well as about 1800 O. aglaia cocoons in straws that Dr. Jim Cane from the USDA Logan Labs gave us. The total release then was about 3,300 bees. We were able to more than double the population: a 2.3 fold increase. Perhaps we could have done better if there had been another Binderboard® to put out as the boards filled.

Dr. Cane sent O. aglaia cocoons to several other researchers and he reports an increase in all of our populations. That’s great news, and very promising for berry pollination.

Next year we’ll need more Binderboard® to support the increased population!
For now the cocoons are being stored on the porch of the Sturm home, where they will be exposed to outdoor temperatures. They are in a planter, covered with a wooden tray.

Equipment Needs for the Project

2009-06-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Grant funds should be available very soon, so the Oregon Berry Bee Project can move forward. The Sturms will be purchasing a webcam, solar panels and other equipment.

As part of the process of choosing equipment, our engineering expert, Mike and I had a long conversation about what we wanted to do with the camera. Here’s the requirement list that Mike generated from that discussion:

Provide internet access to view current image of bee nesting boxes at Sturm farm.
Provide internet access to view current image of bloom on vines at Sturm farm.
Provide timed FTP image transfer to single destination on a schedule.
Internet access to image must be through standard web browser interface.
Internet access to image must be password controlled.
System must be weatherproof and standalone.
System must connect to Internet infrastructure.
System to be easily addressable over the Internet using a DNS named address.
System to be placed approximately 420 feet from existing Internet infrastructure.
System to be placed approximately 350 feet from closest power infrastructure.
System to provide data on basic weather conditions within view of camera.
Nest activity (i.e., caps on nest tunnels) must be visible in camera image
System to be available during daylight hours - nighttime viewing not required

These were some of the characteristics of the system that Mike came up with based on what we wanted to do with the camera, and its location:

System to implement solar array and battery unit for power supply
System to implement an IP camera
System to implement a radio link to camera
System camera resolution >= 1MPixel
System to implement DDNS (DYDNS) Named host on router/gateway
System camera must have built-in OS/Software to facilitate FTP and image transfer w/PW access

Given these guidelines, Mike researched cameras, solar panels, and other equipment.

Originally my thought had been that we might use two different cameras, one to watch the bee nests, and the other to monitor the bloom. I also originally thought that we would power the camera with a cable, which would have forced us to put the bee shelter within 300ft of the Sturm’s barn. When Mike suggested that we try solar power, we gave up on the idea of using two cameras so that we would have money available for a solar panel.

Instead, Mike recommended that we use an AXIS 215 PTZ Network camera. Here’s the specs:

Camera model: AXIS 215PTZ
Zoom: 12x
Iris: 3.8-46mm, /F1.6
Auto Iris: Yes
Auto Focus: Yes
Format: MPEG4
Output: 704x480
Security: Multilevel
LUX: 1 Lux
Pan/Tilt: 360p 180t
CCD: 1/4" CCD
Axis PN#: 0274-004

The Zoom listed is in optical values only. Digital zoom is ignored for several technical reasons.
Lux - the minimum amount of light required to produce an image. The lower the number, the better the sensitivity, although for the purposes of this project, a low-light camera was not considered useful. Outputs shown are maximum values in pixels. The higher, the better defined the image will be. This camera will cost us about $1000.

The zoom and pan tilt functions will allow us to move the camera to preset positions getting close ups of the bees’ nests or longer shots of the berry vines in bloom.

This camera model is not intended for outdoor use, so Mike will be building an equipment shelter to house everything. As for our desire for weather data, we will place a digital thermometer in the bee shelter that the webcam can read.

In addition we will be ordering a solar panel & battery charger, along with the deep cycle battery and the wireless link for the camera. The system will be integrated and tested at Mike’s lab prior to installation at the Sturm Farm.

Incubate emerging berry bees

2009-06-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

Back in April Dr. Jim Cane sent me this image of a incubator for O. aglaia. "Basically a box with a seedling grow mat on the floor and a thermometer. Big box in this case because we are loosely stacking in our foam nesting blocks with nests. No risk of overheating because the low wattage grow mats can’t heat to more than about 80F. I do not yet have a consistent response to duration of incubation…some years just a few days, others nearly a week."

"...one simple yet handy observation you can make are the weather conditions under which you do or do not see foraging activity at nesting blocks (Osmia aglaia) or at flowers (groups you can recognize, like honey bees, bumblebees, etc.). Shade temperature, sunny or not, calm or not, active or not, hour of day.

"My impression with O. aglaia is that 60F, calm and sunny is about their minimum threshold for flight. In contrast, here the other day I had blue orchard bees flying at my nest blocks at 45F (!), again sunny and calm in between snow squalls."

We should try to get more of this data next year. Hopefully once we have a webcam running, with a thermometer in the bee shelter, we'll be able to gather this information remotely.

I wonder if our solar panel will generate enough power to run a grow mat as well as the webcam? Otherwise a grow mat is not a viable option for us.

Checking Bee Activity

2009-06-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

Our project was on hold for the month of May while I spent time helping my mother recover from eye surgery. What was supposed to be a 5 day trip turned into a month long visit. The Oregon Berry Bee Project is getting back on track now.

On Thursday, June 4, Steve and Mike visited the Sturm farm to see how the bees were doing. Steve noted that lots of adult bees were sitting in the emergence boxes waiting to emerge. The boxes were in the back of the shelter. He thought perhaps they didn’t have enough light to see the emergence hole. When he opened the box, many bees emerged. Soon there was lots of bee activity at the Binderboard® nests. That afternoon he saw bees plugging the first complete nests, so presumably some bees had already emerged.

Jim Cane warned me that the bees might need incubation to emerge in time for raspberry bloom. Perhaps warmth, not light was what the adults in the emergence box needed. Perhaps both warmth and light.

Steve also noticed that quite a few O. aglaia were on the ground sunning. Mike took some great photos, below and top of this post. When I first saw O. aglaia nesting in alfalfa leafcutting bee blocks in Medford, OR, I recall many bees sunning on the ground as well. We’ll have to spend some time next year trying to understand when and why they do this. (All of these photos are female O. aglaia)

Note: These females are about 1/4 inch long. There are also metalic blue individuals.

By late afternoon Steve estimated that about 90% of the bees in loose cocoons from last year had emerged.

On June 4 the Raspberry vines had lots of developing berries and only a few flowers left. Steve estimates that raspberry vines were 90% fruit and10% blooms. The emerging O. aglaia probably had a distance to fly to blackberry and marrionberry vines which were in full bloom. We’ll have to keep that in mind and be sure to come in May next year to observe raspberry pollination.

Steve set up another shelter for O. aglaia closer to both the marionberry and blackberry vines, located approximately 400 yards from the original site. Rosie had two more leafcutter Binderboard to put in the shelter, and Steve used one. Steve put the straws with O. aglaia into that shelter, since many of the bees in straws apparently had not yet emerged. Steve placed the straws in a watertight container which he then attached to the shelter to keep it out of the rain. As it turned out, a terrible weather cell hit the farm and surrounding areas that very same afternoon and evening!

I’m getting the impression that O. aglaia emergence is better timed with blackberry than with raspberry. We will have to warm them more than we thought to get them out for raspberry bloom. On the other hand, we could use O. lignaria for raspberry pollination; their emergence could easily be delayed.

Steve and Rosie toured the fields, observing the “catch” Binderboards on the perimeter, and found that there was a small amount of activity, and a sealed chamber at two of the six sites visited. The Himalayan blackberries were in full bloom, like the cultivated blackberries.

Don commented that this is the best pollination that he has seen on his three acres of black raspberries. They are now four years old.

Meanwhile Mike, our webcam expert, has prepared a list of equipment that the Sturms will order as soon as the grant money comes through. More about that next.

Columbia Gorge bee habitat

2009-04-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

Driving home from Corbett along the Columbia Gorge on Saturday I was struck by what great Osmia lignaria habitat there is along the highway. Big leaf maple was in full bloom - the lime green trees in the photo on the left. O. lignaria loves it. It has tons of pollen in small light green flowers in long racemes. I think it also has some nectar, but I'm not sure.

Plus there were periodic wild cherry or plum trees scattered along the side of the road all the way from Corbett to Hood River. Bees are probably nest limited in this area. I'll bet a transect of bee nests along the highway would yield lots of bees, if anyone has a few cocoons to seed the area wants to take the time and the mileage to set them up and take them down.

That reminds me; any of our readers from western Oregon, Northern California, and western Washington can be on the lookout for O. aglaia during cane fruit bloom. They are smaller than the blue orchard bee, and come in metallic blue, green and bronze colors. Hopefully we'll have good photos later this season. So far we haven't any proof that this species is present in Washington, so we will be very interested if anyone can prove that they are there. Good photos will help, but ultimately we'll need either adults collected from the flowers or cocoons from nests with good location records. We know they visit Himalayan Blackberry, so that's a good place to look for them during bloom.

Placing trap nests

2009-04-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

In addition to placing our main bee shelter in the field this past Saturday, we also placed small trap-nest Binderboard around the periphery of the fields to see if we can attract Osmia aglaia or other cane fruit pollinators to manageable nests. The bees that use our trap nests will be added to our main managed population next year.

The first place that we visited was a neighbor's barn on the south side of the Sturm's field. We had a few Binderboard there in 2007, and we attracted Osmia lignaria to nest, plus some other species. It's a great place for O. lignaria because south of the barn is a small grove of wild cherry or plum trees, in full bloom last Saturday. Plus, the barn is just the sort of environment where twig nesting bees look for tunnels in wood. This time we introduced some additional O. lignaria cocoons, as well as one 98-hole Osmia Binderboard and one 63-hole Binderboard facing the blooming trees. With any luck, the bees will emerge soon and forage on the cherry, then move over to the raspberry field when it comes into bloom. The photo shows the east side of the barn. We put two small Binderboard, one 14-hole Osmia Binderboard for O. lignaria and one 39-hole leafcutter Binderboard for O. aglaia, on the top left corner of the pile of wood. Click on the photo to see it full resolution., You can just make out the angle of the metal roofs of the Binderboard. They are far enough from the released bees that we can hope they will be used by the native bee population.

Next we drove around the west side of the farm, and left a few small Binderboard on fence posts near large patches of Himalayan Blackberry just outside the farm boundary. That's Rosie in the red plaid jacket putting hooks into a rotting tree stump. Tree trunks are often a good place for trap nests, because beetles attack the tree in the first few years after it dies. However, this tree trunk was in a more advanced stage of decomposition; perhaps too decomposed to attract nesting bees. We'll see.
Joyce Mills (in blue jacket) helped place a Binderboard on a fence post. We put 39-hole leafcutter Binderboard at all of the sites where we stopped, 6 in all. We also put a 14-hole Osmia Binderboard on the tree trunk above and on one of the fence posts near a flowering cherry tree (last photo - flowering tree in the middle right of the frame).

We left the Sturms with 6 more 39-hole and 2 more 14-hole Binderboard to take to their farm in Nahalem. Rosie put most of them out on Sunday. Thanks, Rosie!

Introduction

2009-04-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This blog will follow the progress of our WSARE project to develop the native bee, Osmia aglaia, for pollination of cane fruit, raspberries and blackberries.

Our two year, Farmer-Rancher Grant was awarded to Don Sturm, a 3th generation berry farmer. His family has run Sturm Berry Farm (http://www.sturmsberryfarm.com/) in Corbett OR for 50 years. He and wife Rosie have 140 acres of raspberries, blackberries, black raspberries and blueberries in Corbett, and they have leased an additional 150 acres in Nahalem, OR near the coast for black raspberry production.

We want to find out if the solitary bee, Osmia aglaia, is a cost effective, practical, and sustainable addition to honey bees for cane fruit pollination. Increasing problems with honey bees such as colony collapse disorder, varroa mites, diseases, pesticides and movement of bee colonies around the country has taken a toll on honey bee health and availability for pollination, and has increased pollination costs for many growers.

The technical advisor for the project is Dr. Karen Strickler (http://www.pollinatorparadise.com/), a pollination consultant who specializes in solitary bees. Solitary bees do not form a colony like honey bees do, with the queen laying eggs and workers foraging. Rather, each female solitary bee makes her own nest, forages for pollen and nectar, and lays her own eggs. Some solitary bees in the family Megachildae, including the genus Osmia, nest in tunnels in wood, and their populations can be managed for crop pollination.

Osmia aglaia is found in western Oregon and Northern California foraging on Himalyan Blackberry. Dr. James Cane of the USDA ARS Bee Biology and Systematics Lab in Logan UT has shown that Osmia aglaia is an efficient pollinator of raspberries and blackberries. He believes it “could be a sustainably managed, economical bee for cultivated cane fruits.” (HortScience 40(6)1705-1708, 2005) He has been researching this bee and trying to increase their populations for commercial use on several berry farms in Oregon, Starting with a few thousand in 2005 he now has 21,000. Dr. Cane estimates this is enough to pollinate about 20 acres of the approximately 11,000 acres of cane fruits growing in Oregon (USDA NASS statistics.).

Dr. Strickler was able to obtain a small population of several hundred O. aglaia to introduce to Sturm Berry Farm in 2007 from the grower who originally supplied Dr. Cane. In addition, she visited the farm in spring 2006 and placed a number of small nest blocks around the periphery of the farm to see what native bees are already present in hopes that some of them could improve pollination. About 2,600 O. aglaia bees were retrieved in the fall of 2007. They were reintroduced to the field in 2008, but only 1,500 bees were retrieved in fall 2008.

Using native solitary bees for pollination fits well into the sustainable agriculture practices on the Sturm farm. The Sturms do not use any insecticides on their berries. Beneficial insect populations have been sufficient in the absence of insecticides to control insect pests. The lack of insecticides makes the farm a favorable place for pollinators as well. Because they offer pesticide-free berries, they have developed a large customer base who we hope will appreciate native solitary bees for pollination.

The photo was taken in March, 2007, when Dr. Strickler first visited Sturm Berry Farm to introduce O. aglaia, and to set out trap nests around the periphery of the farm. One of our Binderboard nests was attached to a fence post. Posing for the camera were clockwise from bottom left: Glen Mills, Don Sturm, John Vinson, and Jerry Mills.

Our Project Begins!

2009-04-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

We visited Sturm Berry Farm on Saturday, April 25, 2009, to choose a location for our main bee shelter where we will introduce the O. aglaia that were collected last year. We were joined by Mike Carter (left in the photo) who has volunteered to help us set up a webcam to observe the bee shelter and bloom so that those of us who are not in Corbett can advise the Sturms about managing the bees, and others who are interested can also watch. Mike has a company appropriately called "Beeline Services", and he has experience with security cameras, IT systems, and photography, as well as an interest in bee keeping. It's the perfect combination of skills for our project. Mike is hoping to put together a system involving a solar-powered wireless net cam.

At Rosie Sturm's suggestion, we set up our bee shelter under one of the powerlines that runs through the middle of the farm. The shelter faces south, and Mike plans to attach the netcam to a post just south of the shelter, looking north.
In the photo left you can see the white roof of the Sturm's barn about 400 ft away to the northeast. The Sturms have a computer and router in an office in the barn. Mike plans to install a "rubber duck" on the top of an electric pole just outside the barn which will pick up wireless signals from the webcam.

We left 4 large Binderboard nests inside the shelter, ready for introduction of Osmia aglaia.
The bees are warming up in the Sturm's home, where they will experience higher night temperatures than in the field. This should speed their emergence. If the raspberry is in bloom when the bees are ready to emerge, Rosie will move them to the bee shelter. If the bees start to emerge before bloom, she will put the cocoons back in the refrigerator to delay emergence for a few days .