Wing Morf
My latest BeeMorf result and how I do it.
The Hive to carry out these tests needs to be queen right and the bees need to be easy to manage by the beekeeper, queen laying pattern needs to be exceptionally good, be able to store a good honey harvest. Queen to appear to be Black and also her offspring.
Use a large matchbox as you need at least 30/35 bees. These bees should be nurse bees. ie: bees that are actually tending to the needs of the young eggs, larvae, and brood. These bees have not ventured outside of the hive yet so there is only a small likelyhood of bees from outside of this colony contaminating your sample.
Clearly mark the matchbox with date and hive details, especially if you have several hives, don’t trust to memory, as this is valuable information and takes hours to get results you might not get another chance to carry out this procedure again until next season.
After returning home place the matchbox in the deepfreeze for at least 24 hours, this will kill the bees and any Varroa you have collected. The Varroa can be inspected later.
The next thing is to remove the RH forewing of the bee. I then mount each wing on a sheet of white card, this takes quite a while to do and you have to remember not to sneeze or exhale too quickly or the wings will take off. Pic 1.
Once mounted on the sheet I then number each wing, for no other reason but to identify when taking Photos. I sometimes use a sheet of glass to keep the wings flat as this helps to focus, I have a macro lens for my Canon EOS 500D also a ring flash so no problems with lighting, it’s difficult to take macro pictures without a tripod, but it is possible.
Once on the Camera each frame is cropped and resized to 10 x 5 and given a number, this is the time you find crumpled folded wings that are of no use. Hence the need for 30 plus wings. Once this is done then its all computer work.
A program is available free trial for 30 days called Beemorf. Downloadable from the BIBBA website. After 30 days a subscription is required of £25 payable to the software author who then sends you a password to enable.
The program is reasonably user friendly, but you need plenty of time to complete all the info input as I have found it not so good to go away from and come back later, make sure as soon as you have any kind of result you save it somewhere on the computer where you can find it again easily. There is a set procedure to input the wing points onto the software. I do a printout of the results as soon as I can see them, just to make sure they are not lost if the computer crashes. There is no software for the Apple mac.
Bobsbees.
ps. Sorry the order of Pictures is not correct, but I guess most of you will be able to understand.
