Your gallery of 2D plots

[Jon]

A dozen dead bees collected from the front of a nuc on Sunday.
I am not seeing a lot of difference between the scattergrams this year which if nothing else suggests some consistency in the matings.

1313

[gavin]

Is it one of these?

http://livingedgeblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/hm_spinningtop05.jpg

[EmsE]

It's a G that's just been tilted a bit.

[gavin]

LOL! First your grandad, then my grandmother is coming back from the grave to send you messages...

[Jon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqk0bkmc1nw&list=UUue8V6a4fIYZX7rf9Pn1qLw&index=1&feature=plcp at 8c.

This is number 88 for anyone wishing to link the tea leaves to the bees.

1317

[EmsE]

I was hoping to do the morphometry on all my hives this year but don't know if I'll have time. I'd be interested to see how they differ now compared to previous queens offspring.

In one of the colonies I replaced the queen in August (due to stroppy bee syndrome) If I got a sample of bees from it during the winter, I take it there will be some of the bees from the old Queen in there? Would it be better to wait until April/May time to check them to be certain it is the new queens brood?

(Sorry-can't resist Jon. That's a snow man with its scarf blowing in the wind. I just hope Gavin's Grandmother isn't trying to tell us a bad winter is on its way)

[Jon]

Hi Emse
Forget the snowman. This was Gavin's take.


88: silhouete of a cow's head leaning down to eat grass, the first step in the manufacture of a Bullshit Hive

If you replaced the queen in August I would say 95% of the bees in the box are her own offspring by this stage.

I have a nuc where maybe 2/3 of the bees were yellow which I requeened in August and I don't see any yellow bees in it all all now.

But the longer you leave it the better.

With regard to morphometry, the jury is still out to some extent with regard to its use as a validation tool for AMM.
That paper by Robin Moritz I have mentioned before casts serious doubt on its validity.
I don't think it is useful to think that a plot showing say 95% of the wings in the AMM box is 'better' than one with say 75% of the wings with the expected venation especially if they are well clustered but just outside the limits.
What it can tell you is that a plot with only 10% of the wings in the AMM box is definitely not AMM.

I made this plot using data/wings from one of my colonies and data/wings from a Carnica colony and you can see in a case like this there is a clear difference.

1318

A lot of the drones in a given area are mongrels or hybrids rather than pure race so it is hard to say what kind of a scattergram you are likely to get from a pure race queen crossing with drones like this.

If someone moved a few dozen Carnica colonies near my mating apiary without my knowledge I think I would pick up the hybridization on the scattergrams.

[gavin]

Sorry-can't resist Jon. That's a snow man with its scarf blowing in the wind. I just hope Gavin's Grandmother isn't trying to tell us a bad winter is on its way

You seem to have a natural aptitude for this kind of thing Ems. Remarkable in one so young.

Given Jon's reminder, is there any chance that you could re-interpret this one as the back end of the cow, with the scarf actually the tail, and the the slot ... well, the slot something else? As colony 88 has matured a little now, I wonder if this is just a later phase in the manufacture of a bullshit hive?



If someone moved a few dozen Carnica colonies near my mating apiary without my knowledge I think I would pick up the hybridization on the scattergrams.

I thought that sentence was going to end '... a large blunt instrument' or '... a large sac of imidacloprid powder.'

[Jon]

It's unlikely with regard to Carnica although there is a Buckfast bandit in the area. Fortunately for me he lost 13 of his 15 colonies last winter so not so many drones mating with my queens this season. I really noticed the difference this year compared to last year.

[fidan]

Hello colleagues! Congratulations to the New Year!
I am from Russia.
Operators differently to put points on the wings. But how? Can share their experiences using the power of the Internet. Here is one example. Is correct?

1366

We can share files tpsdig2.
My colleagues and I are discussing morphometry on our forum. http://apismelliferamellifera.0pk.ru/viewtopic.php?id=92&p=45

Sincerely, Fidan.

[Jon]

Hi Fidan
I didn't know there were beekeepers working with AMM in Russia.
I had a look at your forum.
Don't know if there are any Russian speakers on this forum. I doubt it.
Where are you exactly?
If you want to use the morphplot spreadsheet to represent your data you can download it for free here (http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.org.uk/Downloads/MorphPlotV2.2.XLS)

The software I use to plot the points on the wings is free to download here (http://www.drawwing.org/)

[fidan]

Thank you. I'm from Bashkortostan. This is the Urals.
We use tpsDig2 program http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/morph/soft-dataacq.html . Also along with the Exel program here - http://www.ammellifera.ru/files/kartashov.xls. But the question is - how to put landmarks correctly.

[Jon]

This is the correct placing for the points according to drawwing

1367

Cubital index is the distance between 3 and 1 divided by the distance between 0 and 1.

Discoidal shift is the angle between a perpendicular drawn from a line between 18 and 6 which passes through point 2 measured against the position of point 4.

[Jimbo]

Hi Fidan,
Welcome to the forum.
Jon if you visit Fidan's forum site and use Google translate you will get an idea of their attempts to measure wings. It's quite spooky as they talk about sample size ie increasing to 100 wing samples instead of 30-50 and about the positioning of the points etc just what we have discussed on here.

[fidan]

Hi Jimbo,
Thanks a lot. I want to meet the standard. Noticed that beekeepers have different positioning points. Here are two pictures. There are different approaches. How to do it right?

1368 1369

Our ammellifera hybridized with the Caucasian bee. Their ranges overlap morphometry. Therefore, we are committed to the pharmacy accuracy.

1370

Here is our method of positioning points. I will be happy for your comments. Even more fun is to hear your advice specialists.
Sincerely Fidan.
Best wishes from the Russian beekeepers!

[Jimbo]

The Scottish beekeeping Association ran a Morphometry training day two years ago and there was a link to the training material on this forum site. Perhaps Gavin may be able to place a link to the training material.
The best program for morphometry I have found is Drawwing which you can download for free from the BIBBA site. There is also a good Excel spread sheet for calculating the results that Peter Edwards has produced.
There is also a section on the forum where a number of beekeepers have discussed the positioning of the points on the wing.
It would be interesting to see a result from a pure Caucasian bee in relation to a Amm result. Caucasian bees were once brought into Scotland years ago.
Jon has already posted a result from a pure Carnica and the result is very different from Amm.
With the Drawwing program the computer positions the points for you although I prefer to place them manually

[Jon]

Fidan
I would place the points like you have in the diagram to the right but to be honest, it only makes a small difference to the position of the points on the scattergram.
The difference between Mellifera and Carnica is huge.
I plotted a set of AM Carnica wings and a set of AM Mellifera wings on the same chart.

The difference is so great that it would be picked up immediately if you have hybridization between the two races.

Carnica has a positive discoidal shift and a very high Cubital Index.

1371

This is the link mentioned by Jimbo (http://www.sbai.org.uk/Breeding/) in the previous post

[fidan]

it only makes a small difference to the position of the points on the scattergram.

I do not agree.

Cubital index Caucasus - 1.73 ... 2.75
discoidal shift - 3 ... 0

This is a problem.

[Jon]

Hi Fidan
I see what you mean as the difference is much less than between AMM and Carnica.
If there is a small amount of hybridization the wing morphometry may not pick it up because of the natural overlap.
The key thing as you suggest would be to standardise and make sure everyone is marking the points in exactly the same way.
I think people here put the points at the centre point of a vein intersection as opposed to the outer or inner edge.

You also need to bear in mind that morphometry still has its detractors and not everyone agrees that the readings from the wing vein patterns correspond faithfully to the underlying DNA.
In fact there is evidence to suggest that over reliance on wing morphometry as a means of selecting bees on the basis of racial purity is risky.
Personally, I have more doubts about the reliability of the technique than I had several years ago.

This paper by Robin Moritz (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=40E944022B5FBCB674B52745189501 63?doi=10.1.1.69.393&rep=rep1&type=pdf) highlights some of the problems with the German Carnica population.
The wings were perfect Carnica pattern but when DNA was analyzed there was evidence of significant introgression of DNA from AMM.

There is a paper due to be published shortly from a PHD student at Leeds University which has compared wing vein patterns to underlying DNA microsatellite markers so that may well shed some light on the matter.

[fidan]

Hi Jon.
Thank you. I read your post about Moritz. And read his work. Very interesting. However, in our case for the selection ammellifera cubital index is a simple and reliable tool. Especially if the upper limit set in 1.7 .. This is my opinion.
Our geneticists have found DNA markers to determine the Bashkir bee populations ammellifera. Preparing for publication.

[Jon]

Keep us informed of any published work in the area, especially if there is an English summary but as Jimbo said, there is always Google translate.

I do think care is needed with regard to morphometry. 1.7 for CI is very strict as people here are allowing up to 2.1
If you select breeder queens based exclusively on the best morphometry it is inevitable that you are going to be selecting to some extent for wing pattern only unless the linkage with underlying AMM DNA is 100% and that is highly unlikely. the genes for wing vein pattern could well be located on a single chromosome.

With my own bees, I discount as breeders any colonies which have any bees with yellow bands and any colonies which have a high percentage of wings points well outside the AMM criteria. Some people here keep Buckfast and there are also a lot of yellow mongrel colonies. As yellow is dominant over black, it is likely to show up in the workers if the virgin queen has encountered any Buckfast or yellow mongrel drones - so I use that as an indicator.
Most of the scattergrams I have posted in the last couple of months, I would consider to be acceptable as a source of breeding material but even more important are factors such as low aggression and low swarming tendency and this has to be judged later on when a colony is near full strength.

[fidan]

We also put 2.1. 1.7 - this is my dream :D
For beekeepers now available DNA analysis. Since 2012.
Russian Academy of Sciences in the city of Ufa, Laboratory of Genetics doing DNA tests about 13 euros per colony.

[Jon]

13 euros is affordable to test colony genetics but we do not have an option like that at the moment unfortunately.

[Peter]

Hi Fidan

I have followed some of the posts but not replied - very busy as there is so much to do after moving house.

I have the CI value for Carnica at a minimum of 2.4. On Morphplot I set the upper limit as 3 as that is the top of the graph. As A.m.m. breeders we are obviously not interested in anything in that sort of range. However, Phillip Maier from Austria has produced a modified version of MorphPlot specifically for carnica - that allows for CI up to 6! It is available on the Links page (see below).

On the positioning of points, it is essential to be very accurate as a small error can make a significant difference. This is where DrawWing comes into its own because you can work easily with a greatly magnified image. Remember that the point should be at the centre of the junction - Roger Patterson made a good analogy when he said to think of it as the junction of three roads - imagine a line down the centre of each road and the point is where they all meet.

Agree that morphometry is not everything - we assess all colonies visually (recording the results in the Stud Book) and only bother with morphometry on the best. Initially I scan 30 wings (15 under each of two microscope slides giving 2 files) and have a look at the results after I have analysed the first 15. If that is poor I stop there and then as I know that things will not improve!

Finally, can I ask that you do not use the download page on the BIBBA website. Dave Cushman, bless him, made the system so complicated that he was unable to maintain it and I think that it is still out of date. The latest versions of DrawWing, MorphPlot (both versions) and Stud Book are all here:
http://www.stratfordbeekeepers.org.uk/Links.htm#Morphometry
Detailed instructions for scanning using DrawWing and MorphPlot are on the instruction sheet in MorphPlot.
Happy New Year to you all.

[fidan]

Hi Peter, Jon.


Remember that the point should be at the centre of the junction - Roger Patterson made a good analogy when he said to think of it as the junction of three roads - imagine a line down the centre of each road and the point is where they all meet.


Thanks for the detailed answer. Roger Patterson very lucidly explained the issue positioning points. We still do.
Thanks for the links. DrawWing I tried, but I failed. Now working on the quality of the scan. I will try to learn DrawWing.
But questions remain on some points. I will formulate them later. You may be able to help.

Can I ask - who helped to test our program for morphometry? Based on Exel. Positioning points on tpsDig2.
I have prepared a manual translation to English. (Via Google - thanks to him.)
I really want to remember my school years and to learn English. English for the beekeeper.

With a group of friends we want to educate our colleagues morphometry. For this we must know the subject well. I thank all my colleagues for their help.

I think I began to understand the Scottish humor. Thank you Jon. And of course, we're friends.
Happy New Year to you all. http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/drinks.gif

[Jon]

I think you need to scan at at least 2400 dpi
I scan with the wings between two microscope slides, usually about 15 wings per slide.
sample quality here:

1383

img246_0L.dw.png
cubital_index 1.4317
precubital_index 3.2581
Hantel_index 0.7642
discoidal_shift -5.2007
img246_1L.dw.png
cubital_index 1.3950
precubital_index 2.5927
Hantel_index 0.9079
discoidal_shift -3.7773
img246_2L.dw.png
cubital_index 1.5141
precubital_index 2.9878
Hantel_index 0.8491
discoidal_shift -3.2822

one of the wings, the middle one (246-1L) with points marked

1382

Scattergram of this colony:

1384

[fidan]

Hi, Jon.
Yes. I agree. I will do so.
Thanks for the pics. I'm interested.

[Jimbo]

Hi Fidan,

If you go back to the post 267 and follow Jon's link. There are detailed intructions on how to use Drawwing. The scanner used was an Epson v100 but you can also use an Epson V330. The instructions are from the screen shots when I do my wing morphometry. I also use these instructions when I am training (educating) other beakeepers on the use of Morphometry

[fidan]

Hi Jimbo,
Thank you. I'll do it. There will be questions on certain points.

[Hors]

Hi, ich bin hier neu. Fidan! wir kennen uns aus dem russischen Forum.
Ich benutze auch DrawWing, jedoch ist mir das französische ApiClass lieber.
Was halten meine irischen Bienen-Kollegen davon?
Grüße, Horst

Hi, I'm new here. Fidan! We know U.S. from the Russian forum. I use too DrawWing, but Mir is a French ApiClass prefer. What do think of my Irish colleagues Bee?...

[drumgerry]

My first scattergram and my first experience of using Draw-wing and Morphplot. A small sample but probably not worth scanning a bigger one if these results are anything to go by. I grafted from this queen last year and had hope she was reasonably pure AMM. It looks like I couldn't have been more wrong. And it looks like her daughters won't be worth much as foundation stock for my journey back to AMM.

I'd be interested to hear any and all comments.

1406

[gavin]

More Amm than anything (wing pattern-wise). Not pure, but hey, you can't have everything.

And Jessie Smith says she sees a ballerina, arms aloft in a big loop.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[Peter]

Most wings fall well within the CI limits - there is potential there. Might be worth going back over the wings and checking the positions for points 6 and 18 to be sure that your DsA is accurate.

[Jon]

Gerry, if you want to check your use of drawwing I can send you some scans and you can compare them to my results to see if we coincide, or I can check yours.

[drumgerry]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm having difficulty placing the points in the exact places. Point 6 is especially difficult to be exact with Peter. I'd be interested to hear more on the potential this queen and her daughters have. I do have a better candidate lined up to graft from this summer and whose daughters will be my main drone provider in 2014.

Jon - could I send you by email my .dw images of the individual wings for you to check?

[Peter]

Agree on point 6 - and 18. The idea is that they mark the ends of a line drawn across the cell at its greatest width, i.e. the two points should be as far apart as possible. Not easy with the curved ends, and the problem is that a slight error in either of these points causes a large error in DsA. When you draw the perpendicular line down from the line 18-6 it is rather like a T-square and a slight movement at either of the ends at the top of the T causes a much greater movement at the bottom.
CI is much easier to get right.

[drumgerry]

Tried to follow your advice Peter and enlarged the image to the max before placing the points as accurately as possible. Also scanned a few more wings to get a larger sample. Here's what Draw-wing and Morphplot came up with

1410

[Jon]

Gerry, I did those 15 wings you sent me.
I had to move point 6 on quite a few but the result does not look too dissimilar to yours.

1411

[gavin]

Looks like a similar spread to the previous effort. Far from the other races, and close to Amm. (and you've confused the spirit of my gran!)

One thing though - I'd strongly recommend that you don't raise lots of queens from a mother queen whose daughters are raising the drones for you. You are certain to see inbreeding problems that way.

The csd locus (sex determination gene) is crucial to avoiding diploid drones which will be manifest by a patchy brood pattern and a weak colony.

Mother: AB
Possible variants in the population: A B C D E F G HI J K L M N O P (approx)

Your favourite queen's daughters will make drones of the following type: A or B

Mate them with daughters of your favourite queen and the workers will be:

AA or AB or BB in a roughly 1:2:1 ratio. Half (the AAs and BBs) will make diploid drones.

In other words if your new queens mate with only your own drones then half of the worker brood will be stuffed (ie eaten very early when they spot that things have gone wrong). Bad move. I'd use your less pure queen for grafting ... unless you are certain that there are quite a few apiaries near you.

Actually, I boobed. The Favourite Queen will be carrying more varied sperm which diversifies the genetic of her daughters to some extent, but not her sons. And the upshot of that is that daughter queens mating with the drones of other daughters will produce fewer diploid drones, possibly a lot fewer than I suggested. Even I (ha! not so surprising .... ) get confused.

Still not good practice though.

[gavin]

OK, she's got it now after seeing Jon's as well. Various stills from the ballerina in the Elbow song .....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDY5dAmUw3k

I may have just spoiled this little game. That lady can do just about every scattering of points DrawWing can come up with!

[Jon]

To get your drones right takes 2 years.
If you don't have a load of good queens, this is one system:
1. start with a pure race queen and graft as many daughters as possible.
Don't worry about what they mate with as these are going to be your drone producers for the following season.
2. Requeen as many colonies in your area as possible.
3. Next season, get another pure race queen (not closely related to the previous one) and graft as many as possible.
These daughters will now be mating with pure race drones from the previous season queen's daughters.
You can takes things from there, requeening the most obviously hybridised colonies.

[drumgerry]

Many thanks for that Jon. So I'm not too far off in my Draw-wing technique then. Been reading this thread from scratch for the first time - it always seemed a bit daunting before now! - and read some good info from Roger Patterson on placing points 18 and 6 so hopefully I've got them a bit closer to where they should be now. The last plot above incorporates my adjustments since the first smaller sample.

Gavin - I'm hoping my 2013 queens will be good candidates for drone raising in 2014 and I'm hoping to source an unrelated queen in 2013 from whom I can raise my 2014 queens. With our new association I'm hoping to get samples from members bees and through co-operation maintain our genetic diversity. Where I am in Speyside apiaries are few and far between and there's usually a bloody great hill or ten in between!

Oh and sorry about the ruination of your ballerina Gavin!

[gavin]

All sounds good - and do check back over the page where I've hastily corrected myself!

[drumgerry]

That lady can do just about every scattering of points DrawWing can come up with!

Yes she is very.......flexible

[Jon]

Two from the ESBA apiary

ESBA1 and ESBA3

1583 1584

[The Drone Ranger]

In another thread discussing the local bee populations with Prakel I said I would post some plots
I haven't chopped off 30 wings because I don't like killing bees (or anything) they are just illustrations of the spread between my own hives
One of them had to use the carnica version of Mophplot
N011741N0101742NO21743NO81744NO91745
The first is my hive No1 goodness knows that one is Carnica+ they are productive,gentle ,draw lovely wax,and healthy
No10 is very very fierce
No2 is black looking very gentle
No8 is the same but had some chalk at the start of season
No9 looks black is gentle ,brought in lots of honey, very good brood, no chalk so I chose this as one of my queen mothers
I think its fair to say the bees here are a mix of carniolan and AMM and their crosses
That doesn't inevitably lead to bad temper in in F1 F2 or any other generation
A very good and a very bad temper hive can have the same wing plots
I have to say Roger Patterson has done a fantastic job with Morphplot and its excellent instructions
Sadly it seems from the Horizon program on BBC we are now about to have more upheaval with injections of large numbers of NZ Italians
Those are lovely bees to handle but they have the wrong genetics for this part of Scotland
If I was in Devon I would be delighted to catch a swarm of these but not crossing with the already mixed population

[prakel]

Hi DroneRanger, do you have any historical plots going back a few years -I'm thinking along the lines of whether you're seeing a definite shift in genetics as a result of changing practices amongst larger operations in your area. If so, do you see any notable improvements (or the reverse) to your bees?

[The Drone Ranger]

I have a few slides lying around from earlier years but it's not been something I pay much attention to
My bees are much gentler now apart from some rogues who I try to eliminate

The plan is always to get snelgroves on before swarming preparations by the bees
During the rape crop queens are raised above the boards that allows some queen cell substitutions for temper health etc

Because of the early timing that would most likely pick up early drones ie Carniolan so perhaps not ideal

This year I have used apideas and grafting etc so the jury is out on how that will go
Some years ago using these methods I foolishly re-queened 18 out of 35 hives from one source queen
The chalkbrood fallout was a disaster so I returned to the Snelgrove/swap cells method where almost all queens are decendants of the previous mother
That was bad queen breeding I accept so its important not to focus on just wings
Again Peter Edwards Stud Book is an excellent tool to avoid these problems (which you are probably already using)
http://www.bibba.com/downloads.php
One of those plots doesn't have a single bee in the AMM range but another has 77% :)

[The Drone Ranger]

I haven't done any wing plotting since 2013
How are the bee breeders among us getting on
Gavin,Jon,Kate,Drumgerry etc I like to hear about it
I dont have any apideas in use just 15 keilers
That will be a splash in the ocean to you guys

[Jon]

I don't think I have done any since 2013 either.
Kate Thompson showed recently that there is just no correlation between wing pattern and DNA markers for Amm in hybridised populations.
Earlier work by Robin Moritz reached the same conclusion through checking different morphometric variables in the German Carnica bee populatiuon.
Wing pattern can pick out a hybrid colony ok but the idea that a colony with 80% Amm wing pattern likely has a better queen to breed from than a colony with say 60% Amm wing pattern is a false assumption.
Ruttner devised the technique to distinguish between pure race subspecies by wing pattern and it does that very well.
It does not work for 'concentrating' Amm genes by using it as a selection technique in a mixed race or hybrid population.
You end up with the wing pattern but don't carry the underlying genetics with it, ie it is a selection artifact.

[The Drone Ranger]

I have always fancied the idea of just scanning 1 drone's wings or making some measurements of one drone
You would have to trap the little devils above a QX or something to make sure you had the right ones for the hive

how many queens have you managed so far then Jon

[Jon]

I have probably scanned wings on about 100 colonies and I have done some for other people as well.
If you wanted to check drone wings you could select drones emerging from brood to be sure of avoiding the drifters.
Sounds like I don't like the drifters but they had a few good tunes.
The Undertones covered 'Under the Boardwalk.

[gavin]

Wing morphometry: it has a place. It is just that there has been a lot of naive interpretation around. I'm using it again along with checking the range of the other characteristics of bee races/subspecies.

[Jon]

It certainly has a place.
It can pick up hybridisation in samples which look ok superficially on other morphometric variables.
The naive interpretation would be sampling all your colonies and breeding from those with the highest percentage wings in the Amm box with a view to increasing the percentage of Amm genetics in your stock.
Reading through the bibba bee improvement magazine for the past 5 or 6 years this is certainly the way some were using it.

Speaking of which, has anyone had a magazine recently? Seems like a long tine since one dropped through my letter box.

[greengumbo]

Bit of a revival of an old thread.

I am having real trouble with DrawWing not letting me do the step by step analysis. Can anyone give the definitive order to open files and when to click the "step by step" green tick etc ? I've spoken to Jimbo and neither of us can figure out what is happening.

Cheers !

[Peter]

To Run DrawWing in Step-by-step mode (preferred)
Click the Step-by-step' box (green tick appears in it).
Open the (first) image file with DrawWing.
Click on 'Wing/Apis Junctions' (or use the button on the toolbar, or shortcut Ctrl+a)
Adjust the threshold so that the wings are solid black on a white background and click OK.
DrawWing now presents you with the first wing. Adjust the threshold as necessary so that the veins are clear - it is better that they are slightly too dark rather than too light. Click OK.
DrawWing now shows the wing with the landmarks positioned to the best of its ability.
Check that numbers 0 - 6 and 18 are roughly in the right places. If any have not been placed, drag them into position but do not worry about accuracy at this point.
Drag the magnification slider on the right-hand side of the screen upwards to its maximum position.
Use the mouse scroll wheel to move up to the top of the image and check landmark 6.
Hold down the Alt key and scroll 'up' again. This causes the image to scroll across the screen. Move landmark 5 on to the junction of the veins.
Keep the Alt key down and scroll across to check landmark 18.
Keep the Alt key down and scroll back to check landmark 2.
Now release the Alt key and scroll down to check 0, 1, 3 and 4. 0 and 3 will almost certainly need moving to the centre of the vein junctions.
After completing each wing click on the 'Next step' button (Green arrow), say 'yes' to save the wing data.
Another wing will then be presented until all the wings in the scan have been processed.
If the wings were scanned in several batches, repeat the process for each scanned image.

[greengumbo]

To Run DrawWing in Step-by-step mode (preferred)
Click the Step-by-step' box (green tick appears in it).
Open the (first) image file with DrawWing.
Click on 'Wing/Apis Junctions' (or use the button on the toolbar, or shortcut Ctrl+a)
Adjust the threshold so that the wings are solid black on a white background and click OK.
DrawWing now presents you with the first wing. Adjust the threshold as necessary so that the veins are clear - it is better that they are slightly too dark rather than too light. Click OK.
DrawWing now shows the wing with the landmarks positioned to the best of its ability.
Check that numbers 0 - 6 and 18 are roughly in the right places. If any have not been placed, drag them into position but do not worry about accuracy at this point.
Drag the magnification slider on the right-hand side of the screen upwards to its maximum position.
Use the mouse scroll wheel to move up to the top of the image and check landmark 6.
Hold down the Alt key and scroll 'up' again. This causes the image to scroll across the screen. Move landmark 5 on to the junction of the veins.
Keep the Alt key down and scroll across to check landmark 18.
Keep the Alt key down and scroll back to check landmark 2.
Now release the Alt key and scroll down to check 0, 1, 3 and 4. 0 and 3 will almost certainly need moving to the centre of the vein junctions.
After completing each wing click on the 'Next step' button (Green arrow), say 'yes' to save the wing data.
Another wing will then be presented until all the wings in the scan have been processed.
If the wings were scanned in several batches, repeat the process for each scanned image.

Hi Peter - thanks for reply. The trouble is right a t the start of the instructions unfortunately. If I click step by step the green tick (with the rightward facing arrow) stays grey. I have spoken to Jim (jimbo of this parish!) and a few others having the same issue like John Durkacz.

Anyway around this or is it a software issue do you think ?

GG

[Peter]

Odd - never experienced that.

I would uninstall and then re-install the software.

Best wishes

Peter

[Jon]

Mine stopped working when I bought a new laptop running Windows 8.1 but given that wing morphometry does not actually correlate with underlying DNA is is of very limited use to the average bod working with a part hybrisided bee population. About the only use I can think of is picking out a lookalike hybrid from a predominantly pure race population but there are few in the UK working with populations like this. Andrew Abrahams would be one example but his population is closed anyway so should not be at risk from hybridisation.
I had some plots which have 100% of the wings in the Amm cuadrant but when the bees were tested via mitochondrial DNA they were C lineage not M.

[greengumbo]

Mine stopped working when I bought a new laptop running Windows 8.1 but given that wing morphometry does not actually correlate with underlying DNA is is of very limited use to the average bod working with a part hybrisided bee population. About the only use I can think of is picking out a lookalike hybrid from a predominantly pure race population but there are few in the UK working with populations like this. Andrew Abrahams would be one example but his population is closed anyway so should not be at risk from hybridisation.
I had some plots which have 100% of the wings in the Amm cuadrant but when the bees were tested via mitochondrial DNA they were C lineage not M.

I downloaded 0.45 version again and selected "repair drawwing" and it now works step by step.

Its useful amongst a range of other diagnostic tools as long as limitations are understood.

Does give some cracking images of wings as well !

[Jon]

....as long as limitations are understood.
!

Sadly they aren't as you often hear someone who has say 40/50 wings in the Amm cuadrant claiming that his bees are 80% Amm.
In fact they could be 100% Amm or10% Amm. Wing morphometry is not going to tell you that.
It should be able to pick out hybrids from a mostly pure race population, which look right in other ways.
The Moritz paper which was published over 20 years ago blows the entire concept out of the water and Kate Thompson's more recent work at Leeds showed little or no correlation between Amm pattern wings and the underlying genetics.
Ruttner never envisaged that wing morphometry would be used by people working with hybridised populations.
It distinguishes effectively between pure race subspecies but you don't actually need to scan wings to tell the difference between mellifera and ligustica or carnica anyway.