Morphometry procedures and standards

[Neils]

Jimbo,

I'd like to do that. Rather than go through PM's though can we start a new thread on what we need to do to take samples, how we get the figures and so on?

i.e I'm standing in front of my hive, what do I need to do next? Is one bee enough, do I need 30, where do I go from here?

[Jon]

Hi Nellie.
30 is about the minimum, 50 is better from a sampling point of view.
As the queen mates with 15-20 drones even a sample of 50 may not represent every drone in the mix.
There are two ways at least to do it.
The best way is to open a colony, lift out a frame, shake off the older bees and then pick off or scrape off 50 young bees which have never flown. That way you avoid drifters who have entered the hive from other colonies. However, this is not the time of year for messing about like that as you could end up killing your queen so leave that one for next spring.
What I do at this time of year is take a sample without opening the colony. I take a little plastic container with a lid and place it over a load of bees at the entrance. I then drag it across the front of the box and quickly put the lid on. I gave it a shake to knock the bees to the bottom and then give a quick spray with a mister to wet them and stop them flying out.
Do this several times until you think you have 50. This is an imperfect sampling method but realistic at this time of year and gives a fair idea of what you have. Roger P has pointed out to me that some of the older bees have ragged wings.
Next step is freezing them. Wait a couple of hours before putting the sample in the freezer for 24 hours so that the bees clean themselves up a bit otherwise you will end up with a golf ball of frozen bees and water.
When you take them out after 24 hours, let them defrost on a windowsill in the sun for a while or under a table lamp.
Make sure they are properly dry before removing wings or you will get a lot of dirt and dust on them which means the scanner might not take a reading. This has happened with some of mine.
I then spread them out an a plate. I lift each bee by the right forewing and cut it near the body with sharp clippers. The bee body drops away and you are left with the wing you want. I set this in another dish.
Make sure you dont sneeze or you will blow a load of wings over the table. Yes, I have done that!
When you have completed this for every bee, cut a small triangle off the corner of an envelope and carefully put the wings inside. Label the sample with the colony number. Seal it with a couple of staples and post to Jimbo.

I would be curious to see how others take a sample.

[Jimbo]

To answer a number of your questions.

To take a representative sample of bees for Morphometry you need between 30 -50 bees. The more bees the more accurate the result.
To get the bees depends on the time of year. You want preferably young nurse bees as they have come from the hive and there is less likely of drifted bees. In the autumn the bees are likely to be older bees To get a sample I open the feeder hole in the crown board. I tap the board and bees will spill out onto the crown board which I then collect in a box / plastic tube or can use a honey jar. In spring or summer when you can go into a hive. I first find the queen and put her somewhere safe. I take a few frames of bees and shake them either into the upturned roof or a plastic bucket. I leave for a while some distance from the hive. The older flying foraging bees will return to the hive and you will be left with young nurse bees plus a few drones
which I collect in a container.
When I have my samples I place in a freezer overnight to kill them. To send the bees for wing morphometry. I take the bees out of the freezer and defost on paper towel. You want to get as much moisture out of the sample before sending then in a cardboard box or matchbox. You don't want to send them in anything plastic through the post as they will turn to mush

Jimbo

[Jimbo]

There are two good software programs you can download. The Beemorph software you can use for a month on free trial before you need to purchase an access code. Cost me £20.00 a few years ago. The Beemorph uses a normal scanner which you can place all 50 wings on the scanner bed. You then need to plot each plot by hand but the software calculates the graphs for you. We did discovered operator error in placing the points as various beekeepers got slightly different results from the same sample. It also takes more time to do a sample run.
The other software program is Drawwing which you can download from the BIBBA website for free. There is instructions on how to use it. You do need a photographic scanner with a high dpi. The scanner I use is an old Epson Perfection V100 Photo which I bought on e Bay for £50.
In my opinion the Drawwing software is easier to use as the computer places the point for you but with the option for you to check and correct any funny results.
You will also need to download Peter Edwards Morph plot software to get you graphs, again this is free from BIBBA and has instructions on how to use it.
If you are intrested in this BIBBA is running a Morhometry workshop

[gavin]

Two courses coming up:

Bee Breeding and Morphometry Workshop - 27th Nov, Scotlandwell, Fife. Contact Enid Brown. SBA and BIBBA supported. A world class set of tutors and speakers, including Jimbo! £20, includes lunch. More details will be posted here soon, but there are still a few places available. There will be an extended practical session in the middle of the day which covers wing morphometry and other traits, and the day will have a broader focus on breeding good bees, particularly native types.

Wing Morphometry Course - 20-21 Nov, Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. Bookings to Dinah Sweet, enquiries to Roger Patterson. BIBBA. Free to members, £30 non-members.

[Rosie]

I would like to add just a few points. It's best to freeze the bees for 2 days to make sure that none of them "come back to life" when you warm them up again. If you use the latest drawwing version it's best to select "step by step" mode. If not you will get plenty of wings that fail and you will not be confident that the others were assessed properly. I always use nurse bees but I have one beekeeper who does not believe in opening his hives very often. He smears honey on the inside of an empty sardine can and places it, upside down, over the crown board feed hole. When the bees go up to take the honey he puts a film over the top and freezes them. When they get to me they are dead but sticky so I wash them in a colander and dry them on top of our boiler before doing the assessment. My wife doesn't know that I use her colander so no dropping me in it please.;)

Rosie

[Jon]

. I first find the queen and put her somewhere safe.

That is crucial. I know someone who found his queen frozen in the sample after he took it out of the freezer and it was a Galtee queen which he had bought!
As in any aspect of beekeeping, if you don't know for sure where the queen is, don't do the manipulation.

[Rosie]

I know someone who found his queen frozen in the sample after he took it out of the freezer

A friend of mine did that last season - the plot turned out to be a good one as well. We used the queenless colony as a successful cell starter.

[Jon]

My wife doesn't know that I use her colander so no dropping me in it please.;)

Rosie

My other half didn't know I had sneaked 7 nucs into the garden behind the shed in the middle of July but she found them the weekend I was at the BIBBA conference in Tipperary and there was a lot of bad talk on my return about lack of consultation!
Just goes to show native type bees are quiet and no trouble.

[Roger Patterson]

Nellie,

As already "advertised" in an earlier post why not come along to the Morphometry weekend at Stoneleigh 20/21 Nov?

You have my email.

Roger Patterson.

[Jimbo]

Hi Gavin,

Don't forget John, Enid and yourself will be there.

Hi Rosie,

I have heard of bees coming out of suspended animation but it has never happened to me yet. I also tend to use the step to step mode on Drawwing as I like to check all the wings as it goes through the scan. I have also washed sticky bees after capture with honey and dried them and still get good scans. I have collected dead bees off the hive floor when changing floorboards in the Spring, although there is a risk in that there may be dead bees from other hives that have drifted and been killed. I only checked the wings to confirm the result I got already got in the Autumn.
I also had a domestic when my wife spotted the orange top specimen sample tubes we use in the labs in the frozen veg section of our freezer. My samples have now been banished to the old spare freezer I bought. I sometimes let my wife keep her frozen meals there when 'her' freezer is full.

[gavin]

... and Terry C, Andrew A, Doris F, Margie R, Donna C, Torquil C .... anyone who is anyone!

I haven't checked, but we may have most of the Scottish BIBBA membership there.

The efficacy of the 24hr freezing might vary according to the sample size, the container and indeed your freezer. Personal experience suggests that 48hrs is safer!

G.

[Neils]

Nellie,

As already "advertised" in an earlier post why not come along to the Morphometry weekend at Stoneleigh 20/21 Nov?

You have my email.

Roger Patterson.

I'm going to try and make it to Stoneleigh, the Scotland event is a little too far for me to make it and clashes with a beginner's course that I'm helping run.

[Neils]

Just been taking a potter around the various sites for things such as Drawwing (http://www.drawwing.org/node/1). I think I'm going to leave taking the actual samples until spring and spend the remaining time figuring out just what it is that I think I'll get from this, the ladies are pretty much done for this year and I don't fancy disturbing them now just to satisfy my curiosity, there's no rush and, touch wood, they'll still be there come spring.

[gavin]

There is also the angle of course that you don't have bees that look like natives (if I remember correctly) nor a group of beekeepers locally to join forces with. Hard to make a lot of progress in that situation, though maybe it is never too early to start!

[Neils]

In the short term no, I'm not actually in much of a position to worry about how native my bees are or do much to try and enforce that. But I'm wanting to expand and (at least) double up again to 6 colonies. Going from 1 to 2-3 colonies is pretty limiting in what you can realistically do when you've only got one colony to begin with.

The morphometry thread possibility isn't the best place to go into generic queen rearing discussion, but even if in the short term I'm not realistically going be able to do much around native stocks I do want to start looking at improving my colonies/queens and even if it's only interesting rather than useful information I'd be quite interested to see what something like drawwing makes of the 3 colonies at the moment.

[Rosie]

Nellie, have you got time and energy to start a local queen rearing group? If so you need to recruit a number of local beekeepers and organise yourselves to breed from your best and be prepared to swap genetic material between each other. We have 15 queen rearers in my area and we are divided into 5 small groups. between us we cover a huge part of Denbigshire and Flintshire and probably control a large proportion of the drones in the sky. We hold meetings and compare results (breeding success, methods, colony traits and wing morphometry etc). It would add a new dimension to your beekeeping and would result in fairly quick improvement in both your beekeeping and your stock.

You don't need to be experienced yourself to do the organisation but but it would help if you could get a few experienced beekeepers on board and especially a queen rearer or 2. You can organise visiting speakers to come and help with some of the technical stuff.

Steve

[Neils]

Steve,

The short term answer, unfortunately is "no" right now.

In the longer term it is something I want to look into and know there's at least one other beek in the area wanting to do something similar.

I've just taken on Education for the association and it's something that is keeping me very busy right now. I've also got to acknowledge that I'm still pretty new to this beekeeping malarky and that perhaps I should still be trying to concentrate on getting the basics right before taking on another pet project. If I drew a 4 miles circle around my colonies then I'd have to suggest that I perhaps only know of maybe a 1/3rd of the beekeepers around me.

[Neils]

Nellie,

As already "advertised" in an earlier post why not come along to the Morphometry weekend at Stoneleigh 20/21 Nov?

You have my email.

Roger Patterson.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger. After hours of careful negotiation with SWMBO to get her to agree that Stoneleigh is indeed a picturesque jewell in the British crown and worthy of a weekend away I've just realised why the date looked familiar despite nothing being in my diary.

It's the association AGM!

[Jimbo]

Why don't you give your apologies. The worse that could happen is you will be voted onto the committee in your absence. Kenilworth is a nice town and close to Stoneleigh

[Mellifera Crofter]

Is freezing the best - or kindest - way of killing bees? I'm so reluctant to do that. I thought I was going to look around the hive and pick up dead bees, but from reading the above, it seems to me that is not a solution.

[gavin]

I've previously mucked about doing morphometry with the dead bees off the floor in spring, but I don't think that it is worth it other than to get experience with the techniques. Too many were unreadable in DrawWing, and there is the issue of course that you really need young bees otherwise you include the drifters in your sample.

Sometimes you just have to do unpleasant things to your bees. Is freezing the kindest way? Probably. Can't think of an easier way that leaves the bees in good shape. Maybe soapy water is faster but the cold approach makes them torpid before they meet their end, just as happens with bees that didn't make it back into the colony.

best wishes

Gavin

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Gavin - I'll brace myself, and kill 30 bees.
Kitta

[EmsE]

Two courses coming up:

Bee Breeding and Morphometry Workshop - 27th Nov, Scotlandwell, Fife.
I'm just back from the course & have to say it was excellent & I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd just like to say a big Thank you to Gavin & everyone involved in today. Many bee keepers have gone home this evening with a lot of fascinating info to digest & future plans to make. Well it'll keep me out of trouble;)

[gavin]

Thanks Ems! John (under his classical pseudonym) and Enid will probably also stop by here and be very pleased to see your comments. Perhaps Enid may take her time as not only is she putting up a couple of the speakers at the moment, she is also suffering computer trouble.

I'm guessing now, but do you have long dark wavy hair?

Great to hear that you enjoyed it - I'm very pleased that you thought it worthy of praise.

G.

[EmsE]

I'm guessing now, but do you have long dark wavy hair?
G.

Yes, that's probably me.

[gavin]

Then it was a pleasure to meet you!

We had something of a break in the weather between Friday night's snow and more this morning, something to be thankful for. It was quite a dump this morning and the thunder and lightning gave it something of a Caradhras feel for those who remember Lord of the Rings. It is on its way to Renfrewshire now, and I hope it loses strength before it gets too far west.

G.

[gavin]

Kitta - sorry that you couldn't make it, and I hope that you have enough stores in the pantry to see you through a long snow-bound spell! I'm not sure that I can get out today and I'm almost at sea level ... and it is still coming down. Jimbo offered to perform wing morphometry on left-over samples yesterday so if you would like that done for you that is one way. Alternatively you may like to do it yourself in which case help is on hand here. There were some useful hand-outs yesterday which perhaps Enid could send you. One of them, a table by Ruttner, is a very useful summary of the differences between races and I may scan that later and put it on the forum.

G.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Gavin. I'm glad to hear the course was a success - and sorry to have missed it. Yes, we're thoroughly snowed in - knee-deep - and the hives each have a pyramid of snow on top of them.

I was pleased to receive an email from Jim (Jimbo?) with a link to DrawWing, and to learn that I don't need a microscope - only a scanner (which I have) and some glass slides (which I'll find from somewhere) - so I'm keen to analyse the wings. I'll contact Enid for more information.

Kitta

[Jimbo]

Hi Mellifera Crofter,

If you need any information or help or just want your wings scanned for you just drop me an e-mail.

EmsE

I tried to send you a scan of your results today but the e-mail bounced. I have sent again so hope you get them. You may be glad to know your sample came up as 85% Amm. The best result so far!

Jimbo

[EmsE]

Hi Jimbo,

Thank you so much for that. I have to say I extremely pleasantly surprised by the results. I haven't received the e-mail so I'll pm you with it.

Ems

[gavin]

Hi Kitta

I think that I'm also snowed in now. I did manage to get the car out this evening but it was a *most* unwise thing to do and the snow has continued to come down since then. Yup, Jim is short for Jimbo :)

Jim is a most enthusiastic wing morphometrist and he volunteered to do the left-overs. If he's not careful he'll get landed with several jobs to do with discovering more about the nation's Amm stock. Also, we all know now that he is an excellent public speaker, despite professing timidity.

Yes, just a scanner will do the job. I use (when I get around to it) an HP slide scanner for which I need the wings in slide mounts - Jim uses a flat-bed scanner and lodges the wings between glass microscope slides. One thing to look out for is that DrawWing is fussy and requires image files with 2400x2400 dpi or more. You can also project from slides onto a wall and do it manually. BeeMorph is another programme, less fussy about the image but it is less automated than DrawWing and needs more work to collect the data. Also it doesn't seem to work with the most recent Excel/Windows combination.

Ems: That 85% result would be good enough for most bee breeders to use. Terry yesterday and also some other experts discussing this in the Private Area think that Amm bees usually occupy quite a wide area on the plots. Besides, most of the samples we took will not be pure as there will have been a chance for drifting. But I'd also check them for other traits too (brown to blackish, brown body hairs, thick-set appearance, longish hairs on the abdomen tip, lack of yellow/orange rings) as well as reasonable temper and productivity.

I was about to suggest that when you get your plot from Jim you might like to post it in the thread above, but I suspect that I have to fix something before people can post images again!

G.

[Jimbo]

Hi Kitta,

I agree with everything Gavin has said. I am currently working my way through the samples left at the course. I should have the results all completed and sent out by the end of the week. The results could also be used for a Scottish survey for Amm so if anybody wants their wing checked just e-mail me.

Ems,

A result of 85% is a good result and I would breed from that colony. I would tend to use it as the drone producer. What I suggest you do is find out what is near you ie other beekeepers and colonies. I would then try and get a sample to check their wings. From that result you will know how to plan your breeding programme to protect your 85% colony.

Jimbo

[Mellifera Crofter]

Gavin and Jimbo, thanks for the help and information. My scanner is fine - but I need to find or order microscope slides. I'm keen to try it, but no doubt Jimbo's results will be more accurate and so more useful. I'll send an email.
Kitta

[EmsE]

I've learned a lot today about my computer in making it accept the morphometry graph and will find out how to upload the graph onto the website- I've seen the instructions somewhere- but a job for after tea.
I think the AMM traits in the workers comes from their paternal side. This queen has 2 (half) sisters ( one of which is my other colony) so if I can work around a few IT issues, I should be able to confirm either way. Characteristics of the bees- Temperament- not great, dark, but quite small. I've concerns about their ability to store but if they get through the winter then I'm happy.
My plan (written down but not sure how practical it is) is that in 2011 I get things in place to begin raising some queens in 2012. Does this seem realistic?
I'm hoping to approach local bee keepers about checking their bee wings- a good job for the winter.

[gavin]

Hi Ems

Sure does sound realistic to aim for queen production in 2012. You might be forced into it in 2011 of course if they feel like swarming!

If you think that there are Amm drones around that has to be good news. Maybe an Amm keeper nearby, or some feral colonies perhaps.

I think that the ability to upload images to the forum is broken. I'll try later this evening to see if I can fix it.

and Hi Kitta ... if you are snowed in and bored, maybe clean, clear perpex, or other rigid, scratch-free plastic of some kind, or even pieces of glass (careful!) might do instead of microscope slides if you can't find them?

G.

[Jimbo]

Hi Kitta,

If you e-mail me your address I will send a half dozen glass slides through the post to you. On Saturday at the course I handed out slides to the beekeeper who required them.
I'm impressed by all the interest in Amm by all the Scottish Beekeepers after the course and willing to assist it any way I can ie wing morphometry, slides, information on forming a bee breeding group, instructions etc.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Good idea about alternatives to microscope slides - thanks Gavin - but if Jimbo doesn't mind, I'm emailing him now for glass slides! Thank you, both.
Kitta

[ian]

Hi Jimbo
many thanks for the morphing you are doing for us all, that left our extra bees for you to work on.Realy enjoyed the course,I may have won a scanner on ebay today so will be trying it for myself soon.
Regards.
Ian.

[domino]

Hi All,
First post so be nice.

I'm interested in wing morphometry and have measured a few examples of wings for our association. Mostly mongrels but there are a couple of colonies that show DS of around -4.

The programs I use are CBeeWing and Coorecorder from http://www.cybis.se/

I have a load of .jpg files which I'd like to run through DrawWing and Morphplot to see what difference there are between the programs. Unfortunately DrawWing crashes when opening the .jpg file.

The .jpg files are from a microscope image not a scanner.

2 questions
does anyone know if I can use my .jpg files with DrawWing?
can someone send me some images of wings so I can measure them with CBeewing and compare results?

Many thanks
D

[Mellifera Crofter]

I'm definitely no authority on the subject - but with Jimbo's help I've scanned and plotted my little mongrels' wings with DrawWing and, yes, I used .jpg images. I can send you the images if you want them for comparison. I'll send you a note.
Kitta

[Jon]

I use drawwing with Jpgs.
I'll send you some scans later. Have to rush out now.
PM an e-mail I can send them to.

[gavin]

Christmas shopping, eh? Me too, must dash ....... !!!

[Jimbo]

Hi Domino,

You should be able to use DrawWing with a jpg image as long as the image is of good quality ie at least 2400 dpi.
The advantage of DrawWing over the other programs ie Beemorth is it can plot your points automatically as well as manually therefore removing some of the operator error.
If you need the instructions on how to use DrawWing Gavin has posted a link somewhere on the forum. I think you may find it under the SBA thread as it was used for the SBA bee breeding course.
If you still need help just contact me.

Mellifer Crofter did you find out if DrawWing works with windows 7?
I have heard Santa is bringing me a new pooter with windows 7 installed and interested if I need to keep my old system for the wings

[Mellifera Crofter]

Hi Domino,

Mellifer Crofter did you find out if DrawWing works with windows 7?
I have heard Santa is bringing me a new pooter with windows 7 installed and interested if I need to keep my old system for the wings

No Jimbo, I made a mistake. I don't have Windows 7 - I have XP (SP3) and Vista. I experienced the same problems using DrawWing on XP as I had on Vista, which is that I couldn't use DrawWing in automatic mode. I would be interested to know if anybody else had similar problems.
Kitta

[domino]

I'm on XP (SP3) too. File, Open, find the .jpg and crashes DrawWing.

I have a Win2000 system somewhere, if I get bored tomorrow I'll dig it out and have a go !!

[Roger Patterson]

Kitta and Domino,

As Jim suggests I think your problem is the quality of the image. It MUST be 2400dpi or better.

You may also find your wings are dirty, the usual cause is the bees regurgitating before the die. I put them in a cup, put some water in and swish them around a bit. Don't be too vigourous otherwise you will fold the wings. Put them on kitchen roll or a tea towel to air dry, and they should be O.K.

Roger Patterson.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Kitta and Domino,

As Jim suggests I think your problem is the quality of the image. It MUST be 2400dpi or better.

You may also find your wings are dirty, the usual cause is the bees regurgitating before the die.

Roger Patterson.

Hi Roger - No, the images were of a very high resolution (4800 dpi) and I think the wings were fine as well.

I had a software problem. DrawWing did not work properly when I ticked the Step by Step tick box. It created results, but it did not stop at the stage where I should have been able to adjust the red plot marks on the wings. So, because it would not stop to allow me to adjust the red marks, I got lots of 999s in the results. I could only adjust the marks and get results for all the wing when I used DrawWing manually. This happened on both Vista and XP (SP3).

At least DrawWing did not crash as in Domino's case!

Kitta

[Roger Patterson]

Kitta,

Unless I am misunderstanding you there is no need to use the whole wing, just points 0,1,2,3,4,6&18.

You may find that points 0 and 3 are too far to the right. It is important you get them right, otherwise you lengthen 1-3 and shorten 0-1. This is a known problem and Peter Edwards has contacted Adam Tofilski some time ago.

I use automatic mode then alter each one. I find it suits me better than step by step for everything, but I know others don't like working that way.

Roger Patterson.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Kitta,

...
You may find that points 0 and 3 are too far to the right. It is important you get them right, otherwise you lengthen 1-3 and shorten 0-1. ...

I use automatic mode then alter each one. I find it suits me better than step by step for everything, but I know others don't like working that way.



Ah! Maybe what you call 'automatic', Roger, I call 'manual' ...

I didn't use 'step by step' either because it wouldn't stop to allow me to adjust the points - and as you said above, it is important to get them right. I only managed to do that when I used the menu for all the steps - but quite in what order, I'm not too sure now. It worked in the end and told me - I think - that my bees are little mongrels.

Kitta