Photography - Maybe bee

I was playing around with my new, home made macro lens, and found this interesting little dead thing to act as a model.

I thinks it's maybe a bee.

Or a wasp.

Or an ant.

I think it's a bee.

If it's a bee, it's probably a native Australian bee. Perhaps a Megachile or "Resin bee".

Or a wasp.

Either way, this is what you find if you mentally mark out a square foot of ground on my lawn, and search it as if it were a crime scene.

A very interesting looking little critter.

It's perhaps 5mm long.

The background is a dark woollen glove

Dark subject against a dark background.

Still learning.















120 Things in 20 years wonders how it's going to get a bee to wink in a planned portrait when bees don't have eyelids.

Entomology - A bee!

All last summer there were no bees, and I had to polinate everything by hand.

The closest thing to a bee in the last year I've seen, was a dead one at my mum's house 10 minutes drive away from my house.

No bees.

They are all dying out everywhere on the planet.

Colony collapse disorder I think it's called.

But I saw one, alive and kicking in my backyard today.

After chasing it around for half an hour as it frantically tried to escape my shade cloth I finally got a pic of it.

Thanks rapid fire camera maker.

Tis a poor pic, but it does prove a bee still lives.







120 Things in 20 years - Entomology - Yay BEE!

Entomology - green caterpillar to moth

A while ago I put a few green caterpillars into a jar to watch how they went about changing into a moth.

I've always thought the green caterpillars that ate my aquaponics garden were from the white cabbage moth. The ones that fly around during the day.

But last night in the hours just before dawn, the jar on my desk suddenly erupted into life and out flew this.

In this part of the world, this is one of those crazy moths that love flying around lights at night.

I don't know how they get anything done.






It seems they do this because they normally navigate by the moon. When using the moon for navigation, you can fly in a straight line, or very close to a straight line, by just keeping the thing up there and a little to the left or whatever. If it's up there and a little to the left, and you veer off a bit to the right, it becomes up there and a little more to the left. So you turn left a bit.

The moon is so far away, that even though it's moving as far as a moth is concerned, it's a pretty stationary object in the sky. Perfect to act as a lighthouse.

But when you fly past an artificial light thinking it's the moon, you see it change it's position, so you turn a bit, but it's still changing position, so you turn a bit more. You end up flying around and around until you vomit or die.

If your flight plan happens to be to fly almost exactly at the moon, and your moon is a candle, you don't even get to the throwing up stage. You just die.

So I had a look in the jar and saw this.

I cant tell if this photo of the moth's old home is interesting or not.

I'm guessing it's a little bit interesting.

I should really pt the camera on the one on the left and watch it emerge, but instead in the interests of bread, I just put the jar outside.











120 Things in 20 years - Entomology - green caterpillar to night time moth. Who knew.

Photography - Time lapse caterpillars

My old phone's camera didn't quite behave as it should have.

Each time it went on to the charge cycle it would shut down the camera.

I did manage to get some photos, although I haven't yet explored ways to knit the individual photo's into a video stream.


I had plans of rigging the phone to the back of the boat for my epic Murray River adventure, and adding as large a memory card as I could.

That way I hoped to be able to catch the entire journey, how ever long it might turn out to be.



I think I'll still want to do something along those lines, but now I might have to buy a purpose built device to achieve the same thing.

It's a shame my little test run didn't work, because in the end the caterpillars started to do the transition thing.

It's not very clear because they moved too close to the lens, but they have started to lay down silk to make somewhere to live while they become whatever it is they are going to become.



















120 Things in 20 years - Making the sacrifice of wearing dirty clothes, so that the reader might enjoy failed, but shake free, caterpillar time lapse photography, foolishly set up on top of the washing machine.

Entomology - Buzz pollination via electric bee

According to this reliable source , buzz pollination is something blue banded bees do, and is something tomato plants like.

I've only seen one blue banded bee in my aquaponics system, and that's the same one I've only also seen in my life*, so I thought I'd do a bit of dodgy science.

I've arbitrarily divided my system into electric bee buzz pollinated , and not. The right hand side will be buzzed, the left hand side, not buzzed.

I'll buzz it every day for a few weeks with what we electric bee experts like to call an...

 "e l e c t r i c   t o o t h b r u s h"

My trial involves resting the end of the electric bee buzz pollinator on the branch near the flowers and activating the device for a few seconds.

Science can be complicated.




I'll only buzz the right hand side of my tomato plants and see if there is any increase in the fruit setting rate. I'll be a bit vague about it, because if the difference isn't obvious, it's not really worth doing, so I think I'll judge it by counting the number of flowers that fail to be pollinated as compared to the number that succeed.

I'll start the count in say10 days and run it for another ten where I count. That way I wont be counting existing flowers.



120 Things in 20 years, Where else would you find equipment as complicated as an entomologist's buzz pollination electric bee?




*I've read that a few times and I'm pretty sure it means something

Entomology - Blue banded bee

I had a very pretty visitor the other day, to my grow house.

I've never met one before, but it was a blue banded bee, or Amegilla cingulata (I Think - I'm new to this).

It looks like this and is an interesting fellow indeed.

Unfortunately this photo doesn't really capture the colour of the bands, so you'll have to take it from me they were a very pleasant shade of blue green.

This one seems to be male as I'm told males have five bands, and females have four. Males hang out like this at night, and as far as I can tell, females live in burrows that they dig in soft dry clay or sandstone.

They grow to around 12mm long, and look soft and fury like some kind of plush toy.

They sting, but are pretty relaxed and don't seem to mind having a very close up camera in their face.

The underground dwelling females lay eggs in some spare rooms they make at the end of their tunnel, (one egg to a room I think) and seal the room up with wax after adding a hearty mix of pollen and nectar for the young to feed on.

The best thing about these critters is that they are one of the few things that do something called "Buzz pollination" It involves grabbing on to your flower, sticking your head in and buzzing like a bee. The result is the release of some pollen that certain flowers don't like giving up too easily.

It turns out, plants that prefer to be buzz pollinated include egg plant, tomato, and chilli (so may be a solution to my capsicum pollination issue I had a while back), so buzz pollinators are nice things to have around. So nice in fact that the commercial tomato growers here want to import the bumble bee to pollinate tomato crops, but Adelaide University is trying to convince them that we already have some native Australian bees that do the task even better.

We humans don't have a very good record when it comes to importing things to take care of other things* so it's best avoided, as are all disasters.

Currently it seems, commercial tomato growers currently use vibrating devices to act the part of buzz pollinators, but studies have shown a 20% improvement on pollination if you use these bees rather than the robot version.

Using bees also means a lot less work on the part of the human, so it seems like it might be worth doing. The stuff I've read was from a few years ago, and claimed the bees will be commercialised within a few years.

I'm pretty sure that adds up to now.





120 Things in 20 years for all your good vibrations.


*see "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly"

Entomology - Maggot harvest

My maggot self harvester works.

Which is nice.

I found a stack of lines radiating out from the collector on the table.

I'm guessing that means its been working pretty well for the last 12 hours or so.

Working well, except for the "not letting them get away" bit. So I can enjoy a few extra flies over the coming days.

I think it's safe to assume we all knew that was going to happen.

The ramp even worked, although it has to be said that this particular maggot is actually using it to go back down.

It must have changed it's mind.









But eventually it seems, the little beasties find their way to the exit, and drop down into the container of   horrible tasting breakfast cereal that I gave them.

I dusted the wall of the orange collection container with flour, and that seems to have stopped them escaping, but who knows.

What this does mean is that I can make a better device that's sealed where it should be, and make some  fish food out of stuff that would otherwise go to landfill.

The stink factor was essentially zero, so no problems what-so-ever about doing it in a suburban back yard. From more than six inches away, there was no detectable smell at all. Basically you had to put your nose to it, and we had some very hot, dry days, some hot humid days, and half way through I added a stack of water, so it wasn't stink free because it was dry. (I added water because the dead fish was starting to turn into a dried fish, and wanted to keep it fly friendly)

And they were big and healthy looking.

This one, just big.

It's one of the escaped ones that was foolish enough to escape my cereal feed lot. I watched it being kissed by a black house spider, as it stumbled into it's web.

The upshot of this was a very obedient maggot who was happy to stand still on a ruler for as log as it took to get a nice photo of it's length.

Thanks nature.


The perfect house warming present for a fishing buddy, has got to be a lifetime supply of fresh maggots, via a lovingly hand crafted, self harvesting, suburban suitable, stink free, maggot growing, fish head recycling, bait farm. And I have just such a fishing buddy, who recently relocated to a place where you cant buy maggots for bait, and he just bought a boat.




120 Things in 20 years - Turning fish heads back into fish, with entomology and a maggot harvester.

Entomology - I made maggots

I'm now the proud owner of some maggots.

I hope the people who own this house that are dropping tomorrow to do some repairs, appreciate maggots.

I'm guessing they will.

Who wouldn't?

I even moved them up close to the house so they can best enjoy them.

Actually the fish doesn't stink at all. You can smell it if you get up close to the opening, but that's to be expected.

We've had a few very hot days here, so if ever there was a time it was going to stink, I'm guessing the last few days would have been it.

They look like this.

They seem huge. Much bigger than other maggots I've seen. I'm still holding out hope that they might be black soldier fly, rather than the common house fly.

The maggot farm acts as a trap, so I can tell what's visited, and don't see a black soldier fly, but there's a chance it could have dropped eggs and escaped. Or that it is in there somewhere dead among the fish bits.

Either way, I guess I'll know soon, because if my harvester works I'll be able to get a better look, and take some measurements.

Delicious!

Entomology - Flies and maggots

Can anyone think of a better way to spend a day than breeding maggots.

It's really hot, so I thought I'd stick some dead fish out in the sun.

I've always wanted to breed black soldier fly to feed to my silver perch. Black soldier fly are great, because they turn masses of meat and vegetable scraps into fish food in the form of maggots. The adult fly doesn't actually eat for the fly part of it's life, so unlike the common housefly, there's none of the paddling around in sewage, then strutting they fly style all over your food. Not to mention all the regurgitating they do.

So Black soldier fly, good. House fly bad.

I haven't had any luck with black soldier fly, so I'm going to try house flies.

Oh well. It wont be the first time I've taken a wrong path.

The common housefly is only called common by it's friends. It's real name is Musca domestica.

Everything will be fine. I'll keep a close eye on it, and as long as I collect the larvae I shouldn't see any more flies around than I would normally.

So I thought I'd make a collector. It might even act as a trap, and reduce the number of flies I see around the place. That's how optimistic one man can be.

One of the cool things about maggots, is they try to walk away from their gooey feeding area to somewhere dry to wait out their metamorphosis. What this means is, you can build a ramp out of their feed, and they will walk up it. Then if you design it so they walk out of the feeding area and into a container they become self harvesting*.

It's even possible to have them fall directly into your fish tank, but the problem with that, is that you cant tell how much feed your system is getting.

So I thought I'd make a quick test device to see how it works.

I started with a soft drink bottle.

I drank the soft drink first. It's hot.

Then cut the top off.

For some reason I used green so you wouldn't be able to see.

I cut the top off a second bottle to use as the exit point. This one was cut at an angle so I could mount it pointing down, so the beasties drop out into my collector.

Then I added a tube in such a way as to create a spiral ramp. The maggots will walk up this ramp to the top where they will find an exit hole.

They walk on the tube, not in the tube.

The reason they'll find the ramp, is because they just wonder off in a straight line from where they are when they decide to move on to their next life as a fly.

When they hit a wall, they pick a direction, and follow it around. If they go the wrong way they wont get out, but if the go the right way, they just start heading up the ramp.

I presume they get bored and change direction if they get it wrong.

I taped it all up with office tape, using the green top as a funnel.

The flies will enter at the top, maggots will grow on the bait, then climb the ramp and fall into a pot of disgusting breakfast cereal I found in the pantry, that must belong to Mrs 120 things in 20 years.

That's one of my dead silver perch I've added as bait.

I meant to do an autopsy on it to see if I could figure out why it died, but never got around to it.

It's been sitting in the bottom of my freezer in a body (sandwich) bag, but should make the perfect fly attractor.

Hmmm stinky.



*this isn't my design by the way, it's all over the net. I don't know who invented it, but if I ever find out I'll come back and edit this to credit them.

120 Things in 20 years, exploring the potentially smelly with Entomology - Flies and maggots