Basically, despite the drawbacks with the system, I find it
very useful. When I’m at home and
working on the computer, which is most days except Saturdays, I bring up the
webcam when I first log on, check the weather and the bee activity in Corbett,
and sometimes check the flowers. I
record in an excel file the time, temperature, and whether or not the bees are
active. I try to do this several times a
day. This is giving me a pretty good
idea of how much foraging time the bees have had this season, which should
correlate with their productivity, both in terms of flowers pollinated and bee
cells produced.
It’s easy to see whether or not it’s sunny by the shadows on
the bee shelter in the default view of the bee nests. If it’s not sunny, I usually go to the
“blueberries” preset to see if it’s wet or dry.
On rainy days I can not only see the mud puddles, I also can usually see
drops of water hanging off of the box that houses the camera.
With access to this information, I felt this spring that I
didn’t need to take the time and money to drive out to Corbett to see the
bees. There are plenty of things that I
could have done or seen by being there instead of watching on the webcam, but
they were less important now that I can see what’s going on in the field most
days.
I’ve been a bit surprised at how long the season is in
Corbett. With cooler spring temperatures
and more rain, the orchard bees started activity later than bees here, and have
been active much longer. There were
still some active orchard bees in the shelter on June 21, whereas here in Parma they had been
finished for about three weeks. I would
not have known this any other way, short of moving to Corbett. But if I did that, I wouldn’t have the
comparative information about Parma,
so that’s one big advantage of a webcam.
The webcam has also given me a much better sense of when the
O. aglaia become active relative to O. lignaria, and relative to blueberry
and black raspberry bloom. The O. aglaia became active too late
relative for blueberry bloom this year, and they were probably not very helpful
for black raspberry bloom except for two or three sunny days. The O.
lignaria become active when the temperature reaches about 60oF. In contrast, the O. aglaia did not emerge until temperatures were up to the 70s and
I don’t see them leave the nests to forage in the morning until it’s over 65oF and
generally only on sunny days. This also
is the kind of information that I could not get any other way except to camp
out at the shelter. What’s great about
the webcam is that I can get this information while doing other things. I don’t have to spend hours sitting in front
of the shelter waiting for something to happen!
 |
| Vicia (Vetch) under the webcam (from preset view) |
I like the ability to save images – that has worked very
well, allowing for me to get images for my blog (a journal of what’s happening
with the bees) and to keep track of changes in bloom status of the black
raspberries, blueberries, and even the flowers that are planted in the road
between the fields. I was not even
aware that those flowers had been planted, but I was excited to see them start
to bloom just as black raspberry was finishing.
The photos have also been useful for assessing how fast the
Binderboard nests have been filling, which species are nesting, and when the
nest blocks are full. I was able to
contact Rosie and let her know that new Binderboards were needed in the shelter
for the O. lignaria. When I stop seeing active bees, I’ll able to
contact her to take the nests out of the shelter, which should result in fewer
unwanted species in the nests at the end of the season.
I like being able to add pre-set views. Over the season as different flowers came
into bloom, and as nests filled and the thermometer moved around, it’s been very
useful to add and change the presets.
Except for a few early tries that didn’t work, it’s been relatively easy
to do.
One drawback to the system is that I can’t really see much
bee activity on the flowers. When
blueberry was in bloom, I was able to make out bumblebee visits on two
occasions – that was the only bee visitation that the blueberries had during
the times when I tried to watch for flower visits. I think that O. lignaria would also have been visible on the blueberry flowers
if they had visited while I was looking. On a number of occasions I tried to make 5
minute timings of bee visitors to blueberry, to get a sense of how often the
flowers were visited. Visits were rare
when I watched, and the same was true when we tried to watch bees on blueberry
on the farm last year. So that
information was useful and consistent, if disappointing.
The black raspberries were much more difficult to watch for
visitors than the blueberry, mostly because they are farther from the
camera. That could be remedied by moving
the shelter and the camera closer to the raspberries. I doubt that Don would be willing to do that
at this point because so much would have to be moved, but if we could set up
the shelter again, I would ask to have it closer to the raspberries. I was able to detect visitors to the black
raspberry flowers on a couple of occasions (dots that appeared and disappeared
on the flowers) but couldn’t tell what they were. Still, by comparing images from overcast
days, I have had a good sense of when the flowers started blooming, when they
were in peak bloom, when they were past peak bloom, and when bloom was
basically over. That’s been very
helpful. I’m impressed that the bees are
still active now that the raspberries are finished, and I think that’s because
of the plantings in the road. Again,
these are things that I wouldn’t have known any other way.
As for the slow response of the camera, that is the main
drawback with the system, and I can live with it because there is so much
information that I can get anyway. If
there were lots of guests using the camera, I might have difficulty making the
observations that I need to make, but so far that’s not a problem. The images are not so exciting that lots of
people would want to visit the webcam.
Also, although the camera is less responsive on overcast days, that’s
not a big problem for me because the bees are less active. So far there has always been enough power for
me to check the temperature, weather conditions and bee activity even on
overcast days.
One minor problem that I’ve noticed is that the camera
sometimes moves suddenly to focus on the ground below its shelter, at the base
of a post. It seems to happen if I
inadvertently click on the web image, or perhaps sometimes if I’m only running
the mouse over the image. I haven’t
quite figured out what causes it to do this, or what determines where it focuses
when it makes these unwanted moves. But
I can always go back to a preset after it happens.
I’m impressed that the webcam has not needed much
maintenance once you had Don fix the problem of condensation. (KNOCK WOOD!)
So far the webcam has been there most of the time when I’ve tried to get
to it. Although it sometimes disconnects
when I’m not actively watching, I’ve always been able to reconnect when I’m
actively watching again.
So, overall the webcam has more than met my
expectation. I hope that the Sturms will
agree to continue using it in the future.
Here is a photo of the shelter today. All of the flowers and weeds that were overgrowing the entrance are gone. Makes it easier to see the nests, although I liked seeing the Phacelia. The bottom two filled O. lignaria nests have been removed and replaced by two small O. aglaia nests.. I'm already seeing a few O. aglaia checking them out. I had Rosie leave the top O. lignaria nest because there are still some O. aglaia making nests in it. 
