Inspections

After we collecting survey data, we have been inspecting beehives. The main objective is to collect disease and pest data on Varroa destructor, deformed wing virus, small hive beetles, wax moths, American foulbrood, European foulbrood, and any other abnormalities.

Next we are looking into productivity. In the literature people often use honey production for this. However, since our beekeepers are harvesting honey this is more difficult. Other studies have brushed bees off of frames and measured the amount of capped brood and food stores. This is not practical, as many beekeepers would rather not have all of their bees loose in the air! Instead, we have been taking pictures of frames. We load these pictures into ImageJ and measuring the area occupied by bees. According to the COLOSS Beebook, there are roughly 1.38 bees per cm2 of bees on a standard Langstroth hive. This multiplied the the coverage gives us how many bees are on each side of a frame, and finally how many are in the hive.

We are also using existing GIS data to quantify the degree of urbanization in the ares surrounding the hives. Existing climate data will also be incorporated.

There are several diseases and pests of note, including: American foulbrood, European foulbrood, varroa mites, deformed wing virus, bee paralysis viruses, k-wing virus, chalkbrood, small hive beetles and wax moths. To learn more about these diseases visit our beekeeper resources page.