© Ellen Harasimowicz
THE HIVE DETECTIVES manuscript is shaping up. Last night—after hours and hours and hours and hours of polishing—I gave my tired elbows a rest and played with the Endmatter. For eighteen months I have compiled lists of bee books, movies, and websites that might interest my readers and finally I sifted through them in search of the goodies I’d most like to share in the back of the book.
My favorite treat comes from the fine folks at The Feral Bee Project, who are teaching people how to beeline in hopes that they will use the knowledge to locate and report feral bee colonies.
What the heck is beelining? Well, I’m glad you asked, because there won’t be enough room to explain it all in the Endmatter and it’s pretty cool stuff:
1. Collect a few bees in a box;
2. Let them fill up on honey (bees with a full honey stomach will head directly back to the nest to unload the goods);
3. Release a single bee and take note of your location and the precise direction the bee flies (its beeline);
4. Walk to a new location several yards from the first release site and let a second bee loose, noting your new location and the new beeline;
5. Since both bees are likely heading to the same hive, the spot where their beelines intersect will be the location of their nest … go find it!
Why beeline? I’m glad you asked that, too, because I really only have room to list the link and, well, you should know more:
1. Old-timers beelined in order to find a good source of yummy wild honey;
2. These days citizen scientists hope that finding colonies in the wild will help protect honey bees.
You see, feral honey bees, like all pollinators, have been in a pretty serious decline recently. If colonies are actually making it in the wild, they may represent survivor colonies that have figured out a way to overcome pesticide exposure, habitat destruction, viral infections, invertebrate pests and Colony Collapse Disorder. These super bees are worth finding and studying!
Okay, back to polishing. But before I leave the Endmatter completely, I’ll just dowload instructions on how to build this beeline box. I sense a field trip in the making …