Tag: bee research

Yesterday Ellen and I took a field trip to the home of beekeeper Mary Duane. We were collecting images for the bee book and I stumbled into what seemed to be great luck…

We were hoping to capture “the perfect sting” image: a honey bee with stinger inserted in human skin and sting gland and entrails readily visible. You will recall we attempted this image once before, using my forearm for the “human skin” bit. But that bee, in her death throes*, fell out of the frame. Our shot is good, but not perfect.

Yesterday we tried again. And this time … here is where the great luck comes in … Ellen offered to take the hit. (Is she not the best ever?) Ellen is sensitive to hornet stings and has not yet been stung by a honey bee, but she was determined to just get the whole sting thing over with. “I’ve got my Epi-pen,” she said. “Let’s do it.”**

And we did. Mary caught us a bee with her tweezers. Ellen rolled up her sleeve. I held Ellen’s camera at the ready. Bee abdomen was pressed to human arm. Bee stung. Human winced. Writer (emphasis here on writer) snapped photos.

The good news is that Ellen hardly reacted to the sting at all. And, technically, I got the shot. It’s just that the shot is, well, not anywhere at all near in focus. Sigh.

Guess who got to be “human skin” the second time?

* After stinging, when the bee attempts to flee the scene, her sting gland and guts are ripped from her body. She dies from these wounds, which is why honey bees can only sting once.

** Please note we are not crazy. Every bee expert we have spoken to has assured us that it is highly unlikely for a person who is sensitive to wasp and/or hornet venom to also be sensitive to honey bee venom.

*** Okay. Maybe we are crazy.

 

Without honey bees to pollinate strawberry, raspberry, almond and other crops, the folks at Häagen-Dazs would be unable to make forty percent of their sixty ice cream flavors. Worrisome, to say the least. And so the company has launched its newest flavor, Vanilla Honey Bee, to celebrate the mighty honey bee and also to educate the public about honey bee health issues.

Being a meticulous researcher, I had to check it out.

Here’s the scoop: it is good. Really, really good. According to the (very astute) Burns children, “It tastes like honey.”

Häagen-Dazs is using funds from the sale of Vanilla Honey Bee to fund research programs at the University of California, Davis and the Pennsylvania State University. They’ve also created a kid-friendly website to educate the public about honey bees and their importance to our food supply.

See? Sometimes my work is painful (stinging myself with a honey bee, for example), and other times it is oh-so-super sweet.

 

Ellen Harasimowicz has taken hundreds of amazing images for THE HIVE DETECTIVES this week … but you have to wait until Spring 2010 to see them. Sorry!

To make it up to you, though, I offer you this fairly cool image. I took it with my camera, but its composition is heavily influenced by Ellen. She has taught me a lot this week. (And you thought I was only learning about bees!)

Here is another shot I took today in one of the Pennsylvania State University apiaries, where Ellen and I shadowed Maryann Frazier and Keith Marshall as they monitored hives and collected samples.

I got to help out a bit by manning the smoker. Notice I am gloveless:

Notice I stand much further away from the hive than Maryann does:

I am getting braver, but am not exactly a natural with the bees yet!

Tomorrow we head back home. And the writing begins …

 

Yesterday was another incredible day in the field. I spent the afternoon in a bee yard with several commercial beekeepers:

one super cool honey bee scientist:

one amazing photographer:

and hundreds of thousands of honey bees. They were hard for me to catch on film, so you will have settle for these shots of me checking out a frame of bees and sneaking some honey straight from the hive.

Tomorrow we are off to Pennsylvania State University to interview and photograph more hive detectives. Stay tuned!

 

Hello from Pennsylvania.

I will be here all week, along with photographer Ellen Harasimowicz, researching and collecting images for THE HIVE DETECTIVES. We set out on Sunday morning and have had an amazing couple days … of near-torrential rain.

For the record, bees do not like the rain. It wets their wings and makes it hard to fly. And so they mostly stay inside the hive.

Also, for the record, bees do not like to have their hives disturbed when they are hunkering down during a rainstorm. It makes them angry.

And so we spent most of yesterday indoors. Luckily there is a lot of interesting stuff going on inside the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, even on a rainy day. Here is a shot of Ellen at work. The bee scientist is Nathan Rice, who was kind enough to walk us through a day in his lab life. Nathan even stung himself—twice—so that Ellen could photograph the sting process. And then, because I am the sort of gal who is willing to sacrifice for her art, Nathan held a bee to MY arm so that I could live the sting process. Seriously. I let myself be stung by a bee. And we have a picture. And it is pretty cool.

Today we are shooting in another bee lab and, if the weather holds, in a commercial bee yard. This is the day we will break out the bee suits.

Have I ever mentioned here how much I love my job?

 

Here is the hive …

And here is the equipment …

Here is the beekeeper …

And here are her charges!

As if an hour working the hives and photographing bees (while wearing a bee veil and gloves, mind you!) was not cool enough, I came home with a jar of the most delicious golden brown honey I have ever tasted. Ever.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job?