Previously we set up the greenhouse (Site1a2g) as an enclosed space with supplemental/augmenting resources (pollen, sugar water, "mud"). Then we released the bees, actually placed the cocoons, on Wednesday morning, the 19th of February. On Thursday, we did our first check of the bees progress. On Friday the 21st we checked the status of the bees, cocoon, and our enclosed space. On Saturday the 22nd, it rained all day. There was little or no bee activity on the 23rd. On Monday the 24th, there was not much activity. On Tuesday the 25th, one bee emerged from the cocoons and we found one be dead in the pollen dish. On Wednesday the 26th, we examined the greenhouse and saw not bee emergence's inside the PVC tube. Before we did that we decided to dissect some of the cocoons from the first set.
Based on our dissection above we decided to release an additional 30 bees, nominally 20 males and 10 females, directly into the greenhouse by opening the cocoons. We sorted the cocoons by size, 20 'small' male cocoons and 10 'larger' female cocoons.
By releasing the bees directly without waiting for natural emergence we will avoid the probability of 'cooking' the cocoons as discussed previously. Now, we will monitor the progress of the released bees.
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