We have now entered Phase 2 of the project: monitoring the status of the habitats. We have been doing this since placing them at the four locations starting in March.
PHASE 1: PLACING THE BEES/HABITATS
PHASE 2: MONITORING THE STATUS OF THE BEES/HABITATS
PHASE3: HARVESTING THE COCOONS
We had collected the Site1a1 habitats on 5 June and stored them in a temperature controlled environment, a refrigerator. On 19 June we did the same for the Site1a2 habitats.
Why the delay since both Site1a1 and Site1a2 are "right next to each other"?
Because Jim and Michelle went on a foreign trip to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of D Day!
The trip started in Paris on 1-4 June, 5-6 June in Normandy; Omaha Beach specifically, then on to Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The purpose of the trip was the Concordia University Irvine CWO (Concordia Wind Orchestra) was invited to play on Omaha Beach on June 6th under the direction of Col. Arnald Gabriel, who is a veteran of WW2 as a nineteen-year old machine gunner.
When we returned we collected the four habitats at Site1a2 leaving the one just recently set up to attract leaf cutter bees.
We discovered that Site1a2d had little ants on it. Remember that Site1a2d was also the location of the parasitic wasps.
We decided to immediately "harvest" the Site1a2d habitat. This accelerates us into Phase3 for these particular habitats.
There did not seem to bee any ant infestation although we did see a few as we disassembled the blocks.
The "dead bee" was a "single Mom" who gave the ultimate sacrifice, working to the very end.
One interesting observation was that there was a more contents in the habitats than a simple external accounting of 'tubes filled' would credit. This brings into question our metric of "Tubes Filled".
Based on the observations, we decided to 'harvest' the most successful habitat for the adjacent Site1a1a.
This habitat had eight tube obviously filled. When we disassembled it we found more materials that were not visible from the outside.
We did find some bees (18-24) that we originally thought were all dead. Gene called back later to say that he had seen some movement by the bees. He then refrigerated them to save them for further analysis. We plan to send photos and videos to our expert advisors.
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