Donor prizes

Hey everyone! It's our pleasure to present to you all the potential prizes you can receive for being the top 3 Microryza donors:

                

         

We are going into full drive as the warm weather hits us with all its glory! We have recently received new hives, and are in the process of trapping swarms. Here are our new hives, with brand new crew: 

                                               

Some of our UW bee interns present, working ever so vigorously with Evan, our beekeeping professor:

                                               

Next week Tuesday (May 7th) will be our May meeting, so be sure to stop by! Stop by to see the beeeessssssssss!!!!

                                          
                                                    

Bees and art

So we have finally made the seed bombs on Friday last week, which should be dried already and ready to go this week. We will keep you posted on when we will be pelting the seed bombs around campus.

Another exciting news we have here for you today is Masha's Bee Art!                                               
                             

                                          

Masha has a history with art along with working with bees, and she has amazingly combined the two to create innovative designs.

 

She has agreed to collaborate with the UW Bee Group, and we are happy to announce that donors of our Microryza project may also receive Masha's beautiful art pieces as prizes! To learn more about Masha and her history, please click here.

SEEED BOMBS

Ok! It's been decided! SEED BOMBS TOMORROW, FRIDAY 04/19/13!

We will be meeting by the UW Greenhouse at 3:30PM, so stop by! We can pretend we're throwing ninja stars (except they're actually seeds).

Paws on Science and beyond!

Paws on Science last week at the Pacific Science Center went well! We had a whole team of people show up (thank you all volunteers!!), and had a great time with all the children and parents who stopped by. Lots of questions and curiosity, not just from little kids but also their parents! Hopefully we've convinced a whole bunch of them to become beekeepers, or at least made them more aware of bees and their environment.

 

                            

The group is also planning on throwing seed bombs (yes, little sacs that can burst with seeds) by the end of this week! It will either be Friday afternoon or Sunday morning if you would like to join, and information will be finalized by this Thursday (04/18/13)!

Also, though we have mentioned this continuously, we appreciate any help we can get! Volunteers and donations are always welcome! Remember, your funds will go towards sustaining our program and enabling our research! For more information on how you can donate, please visit our Microryza Project Website

We will keep you posted on future events! You can also check us out at Facebook~!

The weather is warming up! That means...

Bees will be picking up activity as Seattle as we transition to April. And with that, our tasks and schedules will be just as hectic!

The first week of April will be our Paws on Science volunteer event at the Pacific Science Center! We'll be there Friday to Sunday (April 5~7), and this will be a great chance for everyone to come to learn about bees. It's also a great occasion to socialize and meet new people!

We also have another Microryza project available for funding for the next few months. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your significant other! Publicity helps too~

UW Microryza: Discoveries Made Possible Through You!

Stay tuned to our site or Facebook group for more information on upcoming events and activities! Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about our group or plans.

Wax Purification - This Year’s Plans

We have our sights set on concluding the work we began in 2012. Last year we came up with good sources of wax to test, built a solar wax melter, generated samples, ran some sample preparations, and found an analytical laboratory anxious to help. However, we were held up at the analysis stage, mostly by the cost. Our samples will take over $200.00 each to analyze. The tests cover a number of common contaminants and are precise to the parts-per-billion. This is the type of data we’d like to see, but we can not get around the cost.

Microryza to the rescue! This season’s round of crowd-funding will focus on getting the money to have our analyses done. We will also need to purchase some more hive parts, frames & foundation, more bees, and some pest management supplies, all routine beekeeping expenses. We have a detailed budget for anyone to examine.

Plans. We will generate a new series of samples from treatments similar to those used in 2012, being ultra-cautious not to cross-contaminate, and select 8 of them for analysis. Processing will be similar, running each sample through a carbon filtration system. However, we will probably not use the solar wax melter, as our solar days are so limited (it takes all day full sun to operate and that’s just not dependable in Seattle, even in summer.) This year, pending success with Microryza, we should have funds to proceed with analysis by the time we have the samples ready. Results should be available in the Fall.

The big IF. Success of this method (significantly reduced contamination of wax) is not guaranteed. However, if it works we will proceed to send our results to one of the major beekeeping journals for fast publication. Depending on tidiness our procedures and the quality of the results, we may even send to one of the peer-reviewed beekeeping science journals. What happens next is hard to guess. Beekeepers are a practical lot. If they can find a way to incorporate the procedure into their operations economically, we could see this become an important contribution to the new era of beekeeping. Many people and organizations would be to thank!

Stay tuned for updates! Contribute to our effort! Here’s our donor link:

https://www.microryza.com/projects/training-students-to-be-next-generation-beekeepers

Microryza Rides Again for Bee Science!

We have a new, improved, updated, Microryza crowd-funding donations page! Here is the link:

https://www.microryza.com/projects/training-students-to-be-next-generation-beekeepers

Last year, Microryza helped us earn enough to support continuation of the bee program, the bee course, and its associated research. By summer, this money will be gone, so now we are starting a new funding cycle.

If you are a potential contributor, go to the site and read more about our cool work. If you are a current UW Farm Bee Group participant, forward this link to all you know! We have super goals, so don't be shy to ask for donations to our cause. Microryza is the way to donate.

Thanks to the funding wizards, our friends at Microryza! You will be sweetly rewarded!

Springy Day!

Most Spring-like day of the year so far, with temperatures above 55 deg. F, the bees were flying in clouds in front of the hives. They looked healthy, with no signs of the dreaded Nosema disease. It was a perfect time to put on syrup feed and even to take a quick look inside and to put on some protein supplement. Activity at this time of year can be influenced by various things, including whether or not the queen is laying or the basic temperament of the bees. Hive No. 2 contains Italian bees. From the outside, they were quiet, with no noticeable flight. Yet on inspection, their box was full of healthy workers! Maybe it was just not warm enough for their “Italian” dispositions. This was an unusual day, a good test of the air, but there will be cold, gloomy times ahead before the smell of the nectar flow arrives. Supplementary food will be welcome, should help fortify the glands of workers so they can rear more brood, keeping the queen busy.

Testing the air.

Hive 5, ready to roll.

Extra protein, more eggs.

Syrup gone, hungry bees, good sign!