What a buzz – the initial count is…
84 probables and 5 possibles!
Went through the last few tubes yesterday. I noticed that about a quarter of the cocoons were larger (mostly at the back end) and thus probably females. I have been trying to avoid damaging the precious contents of the tubes by manipulating them to the minimum – my gentle squeezing technique (rather than cleaning the debris out of the tubes) seemed the optimal way of know where they were situated. However, I had two small moments of anxiety as angry buzzing noises came from tubes 16 and 38. I am not sure if my heart ‘skipping a beat’ was an pre-programmed instinctual one, but it was a small fright nevertheless!
The noise was very similar to when, at the start of 2006, I was helping set the last of their parents generation free from the remaining tubes. No damage was done physically, as they all flew off afterwards – but who knows what muttering mutiny is happening in 16 and 38?
This is however, another anecdotal confirmation that some of them have reached an adult maturity to be able to beat their wings inside the cocoons. Now they are waiting for clocks to countdown or temperatures to rise. Rather than pushing the tubes back in their rows, I now have placed the freed tubes inside two black socks, to cut out the light. I am considering putting them in a cooler basement to avoid a premature emergence (and a subsequent risk of a cull by frost), but I may leave one or two tubes nearby as a way of monitoring when the first emerge so as to know when to get the rest to the right take-off place, probably just in front of my camera in the early spring sun.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
[...] empty shells, emerged but blocked bees and even which ones had buzzed at me, to see if my earlier cocoon count had been accurate [I will later fill out a spread sheet to compare and verify these [...]