Bees

RobertDyck · 2020-11-01 23:04:46

Here's research we might be able to get fund for. How do we transport bees to Mars? Can we transport honeybee eggs? Can we keep eggs dormant for 6 months, say keeping them cool in a refrigerator. Warm to normal temperature on Mars to develop.

Transporting bees on Earth today is a problem. Queen bees must be transported in 2 days or less. They have to be fed honey as soon as they arrive, because they're starving hungry. Transporting bees is a major problem, especially long distance. So the bee industry may be willing to fund this.

Honeybee life cycle
Honeybee eggs normally hatch in just 3 days. Queens are lava 5½ days, cell capped 7½ days, pupa 8 days.

Where do bees go in winter?

Honeybees stop flying when the weather drops below 50 degrees. When the temperature drops below that, the bees all crowd into the lower central area of the hive and form a "winter cluster." The worker bees huddle around the queen bee at the center of the cluster, shivering in order to keep the center around 80 degrees. The worker bees rotate through the cluster from the outside to the inside so that no bee gets too cold. The outside edges of the cluster stay at about 46-48 degrees. The colder the weather is outside, the more compact the cluster becomes.
Hibernating honeybees have been studied and shown to consume up to 30 pounds of stored honey during the winter months, which helps the bees produce body heat.
...
During fall, blue banded bee adults all die as temperatures cool within their nests. Before they die however, the female bees lay eggs within the nests which become immature bees called prepupae. They remain dormant, burrowed in the nest inside cell sacs throughout the winter months and do not emerge until spring brings warmer weather. Then they finish their development into adults and emerge into the warmth of spring and begin a new season of life.

Could we chill honeybee young similar to blue banded bees?

Wikipedia: Queen bee development

Any fertilized egg has the potential to become a queen. Diet in the larval stage determines whether the bee will develop into a queen or a worker. Queens are fed only royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from glands on the heads of young workers. Worker larva are fed bee bread which is a mixture of nectar and pollen. All bee larvae are fed some royal jelly for the first few days after hatching but only queen larvae are fed the jelly exclusively.

Wikipedia: Drone bee

A laying worker bee exclusively produces totally unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones. As an exception to this rule, laying worker bees in some subspecies of honey bees may also produce diploid (and therefore female) fertile offspring in a process called thelytoky, in which the second set of chromosomes comes not from sperm, but from one of the three polar bodies during anaphase II of meiosis.

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-02 06:58:56

For RobertDyck re #1

Thank you for introducing this important topic, and for raising the question of how to transport the genus to Mars with success.

I have a bit of experience raising bees, but not enough to add anything useful to the topic. What I can do is to encourage others with experience to comment upon the challenges of raising bees successfully on Earth, and to extrapolate on how bees might be transplanted to Mars.

I do have a couple of books left over from my adventures with bees, and might be able to look up something if an occasion arises.

The main resource I would suggest is a commercial bee raising and distribution operation in the local area. The family operated business is developing the third generation to carry on. They bring truck loads of bee starter colonies up from the South every year.

A detail I remember is that the queen is inside a container with a sweet plug. After the colony is installed (I've forgotten the details of that process) the queen container is exposed to the workers, and she is liberated shortly afterward because the workers consume the plug.

On Earth, the biosphere is hostile to bees.

With any luck (and I suspect mostly great care) bees might be moved to Mars without the burden of multiple destructive agents.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2020-11-29 17:17:47

Formal study on hibernation... Blue Banded Bees: Potential Pollinators of Glasshouse Tomatoes

Note: the study was conducted in Australia, which has seasons opposite to those of us in the northern hemisphere.

Melissa made up many little plastic dishes holding small batches of blue banded bee prepupae. She stored these dishes in incubators set at various temperatures from 8 up to 29 degrees C. Patiently Melissa watched her little charges, day be day, carefully adjusting the temperature and humidity to keep them healthy. Melissa divided the development process from prepupa to adult into nine different stages (see photographs) and diligently recorded the number of days it took each bee to develop from stage to stage.
Sure enough by mid September many of Melissa’s prepupae developed into adults which she then released into the glasshouse room. We were excited to note that at our main natural nest site (outside of the glasshouse), the bees had not even started to fly by late November. So Melissa’s experiments had been very successful in making the prepupae develop into adults much earlier than they would have done in the wild!

So this raises the question: could a honeybee larva be kept placing them in pure royal jelly and refrigerating to 8°C? Larva fed nothing but pure royal jelly develop to become a queen. Industry has a problem that queen bees are transported from New Zealand to North America, but transportation by air is quite tricky because the bees have to be fed regularly to ensure they don't starve to death. Could honeybee larva be transported in pure royal jelly, in a plastic cell, stored in a cooler with an active refrigerator? You can buy 12-volt cooler bags now. Feeding a honeybee larva pure royal jelly will ensure it becomes a queen. The hibernation cell could be plastic, but cap with a "queen cell" made of moulded bee's wax. That would ensure the queen could get out when fully developed. Commercial industry could use this to transport larva which will develop to become a queen. For Mars, could we put a larva into hibernation for 6 months? Transportation from Earth to Mars?

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-29 17:58:45

For RobertDyck re #3

Thank you for this report on impressive research!

SearchTerm:BeeQueen to Mars
SearchTerm:RoyalJelly hold bee larvae for transport

(th)

jakeypoos · 2020-11-30 21:44:25

Why not use the same method as Craig Ventner when he created artificial life. Send empty bee cells to mars, and when we get there place the DNA code into them that we've stored in computer memory. Or we could receive the DNA code by laser from earth.

Last edited by jakeypoos (2020-11-30 21:46:45)

kbd512 · 2020-11-30 23:42:41

jakeypoos,

Can you do something similar with plants, or is it easier to just take the seeds?

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-01 08:12:14

For kbd512 re #6 .... thanks for a neat follow up to #5!

For jakeypoos re #5 ... A person could achieve some success in life by implementing this idea ...

By any chance are you embarked upon a career path along those lines?

If so, there is a reasonably good chance you would receive encouragement in this forum ....

Edit#1: I went back to look at your earlier posts, and found this:

I’m very much into futurology and I’ve done various forms of art all my life, and so I just follow my curiosity in that spirit.
I’ll soon be finishing my current project, which is a virtual model of Bradford on Avon here in Britain, as it was 1000 years ago, when an Anglo Saxon church that’s still standing there, was built. My virtual model is built in EPIC’s game engine, Unreal engine using LIDAR scans. I've taken virtual photos of the model and placed them along side comparison photos of Bradford on avon today, on their own website here

Because this topic is about bees (and your suggestion fits in perfectly, of course) I'd like to invite you to report on your progress with the virtual model in another more appropriate topic.

There is a topic where an update on your progress with the virtual model would seem to fit well: Civilization and Culture.

Please post an update there! I (for sure ) would be interested in your progress.

Learning how to construct DNA from computer code is not for the faint of heart. Is that something you'd be interested in pursuing?

It would be valuable for human expansion throughout the galaxy, but (of course) like nuclear power, it is fraught with dangers.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2020-12-01 08:18:36

jakeypoos,
Growing an organism isn't just about DNA. You need an organism to use the DNA as instructions to grow a whole, living thing. Growing a human requires an ovum. That ovum has a mitrochondria to provide energy, and the mitrochondria has a plasmid, which is a ring of DNA. The nucleus has 23 pairs of chromosomes, which are long strings of DNA. So the chromosomes aren't enough. Furthermore, during cell division the chromosomes line up on structures called centrosomes. Click image for Wikipedia article on mitosis, which is normal cell division. My point is the cell needs a lot more than just DNA to function.

Furthermore, a whole living cell isn't enough. For mammals such as humans, we require a womb. Evolution is interesting. Fish lay eggs, which develop into small fish. Amphibians evolved from fish, but still have to lay eggs in water to ensure they don't dry out. Lizards developed a hard shell to enclose the egg so it doesn't dry out on dry land. Mammals including humans also produce an egg, but it doesn't have a hard shell. A mammal mother doesn't lay the egg, instead it stays inside her body. While fish and lizards provide enough nutrients in their egg to feed the fetus until it hatches, a mammal grows a placenta, and the egg provides just enough nutrients to feed the fetus until it developes that placenta. That attaches to the mother's womb and extracts nutrients from the mother's blood. Did you realize the amniotic sack evolved from an egg, basically the amniotic sack is an egg?

Bees evolved from wasps. Bees are basically wasps that went vegan. Wasps eat other insects, but bees don't; bees eat nectar and pollen. Bees have an interesting development process. They still lay an egg; it doesn't have a hard shell, but the soft shell is able to control moisture so it doesn't dry out. It doesn't hatch as a small but fully developed creature like a fish or amphibian or lizard. Insect strategy is to hatch a worm-like creature called a larva. The larva eats to grow, develop body mass, then the larva encloses itself in a pupa or cocoon to enclose itself while it finishes development. It's body feeds on the body mass grown as a larva to finish development into an adult. Some insects grow a hard but thin shell, some spin a cocoon from excreted fibre, bees have adults build a cell made of wax. Some insect larva eat leaves, some eat other insects, bees provide "royal jelly" excreted from an adult bee. If the larva is fed royal jelly and "bee bread", it develops into a worker. If it's fed nothing but royal jelly, it develops into a queen. Bee bread is a mixture of pollen and nectar.

We can manufacture a cell of plastic to hold the egg and larva. We can't manufacture royal jelly, but can collect it from a bee hive. We also cannot manufacture bee wax, but can collect it from a hive. Feeding a bee larva nothing but royal jelly will ensure it develops into a queen. Moulding wax into a shell called a "queen cell" provides the protective enclosure it needs for its pupa phase to develop from a larva into an adult.

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-01 08:29:55

For RobertDyck re #8

Thanks for this (impressive to me!) follow up to the original suggestion!

Your contribution arrived just after I had attempted to encourage jakeypoos to embark upon the many years of study it will take to achieve the desired result.

My understanding of the difficulty is much greater thanks to your explanation.

I have no doubt the desired result can be achieved, but (obviously thanks to your explanation) I can see it will be far more involved than I had supposed when the suggestion first showed up in the topic.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2020-12-01 10:38:59

Doing what he suggested is possible, but very difficult and very involved. I suggest putting bee larvae into hibernation like blue banded bees is much easier. One species of bee does this, so it may be possible to do it with another. You can buy royal jelly and bee wax in stores today, so the necessary ingredients to develop larvae into adult bees are something we don't have to develop. Blue banded bees provide a lot of food for their larvae to survive winter months, we would have to do the same, but again that sounds a lot easier.

tahanson43206 · 2020-12-01 11:59:12

For RobertDyck re #10

We (humans) can operate on more than one track at a time.

Would you be willing to write up a short description of the kind of person/group you'd like to enlist to pursue this (bees-to-Mars)?

Thanks to our Russian spammer friends, we have thousands of ID's created in the forum User database, and already over 300 are ready for re-use by persons specifically invited to help with various projects.

Successful transplant of bees to Mars would seem (to me at least) a worthy project in its own right.

As you have stated in this topic (and elsewhere in the forum) there is likely to be more than one way to achieve this, and there are enough people on Earth so that all possible ways can be explored simultaneously.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-12-30 17:43:38

Just got Mother earth's page on Bees

tahanson43206 · 2021-05-21 11:30:13

For RobertDyck ... thank you for providing a topic devoted entirely to bees!

This item shows the first encouraging news I have seen, since losing a hive I tried to give a home here ...

No doubt my inexperience as a bee keeper was a factor, but the parasites that have been assaulting bees in recent years may have been at work as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/miami-resear … 00991.html

So Zomchek and others use cutting-edge reproduction techniques where they use carbon dioxide to put desirable queen bees to sleep, and using tiny tubes and microscopes, inseminate them with genetic material from male bees that keep themselves clean.
He said some beekeepers have reported losing about 9% of hives from year to year, a great improvement over 60%.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-05-31 07:44:14

Bees are dying from toxic chemicals and the feds won't save them
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/0 … -save-them

Monarch butterflies harmed by common neonic pesticides, study suggests
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/monarch … -1.6024834

Could you still do a series of Bee Colony if 95% of your Bees died before the next Mars Summer?
The Blue banded Bees are a good suggestion to work with in some kind of experiment simply because as bees go they are classed as 'not as aggressive as other bees' they do however build solitary nests which probably means no wax production and no honey production. For human farmers this would not be a hard working enough ,not productive enough bee for a future Space farm colony.

Animal/insect flight is a constant struggle against gravity but remove that gravity and you introduce a new element of chaos for them?

There is no reason why some Private insect thing with Experiments on Some Private Sector Commercial Rocket can't be put into orbit now to see how Bees can survive in space, how long can they survive? How many will be healthy once they land on regular ground again??
I would suggest some rotation Artificial gravity concept, give them real gravity just in case something made the bees evolve to do something strange like 'not fly' under the conditions of micro-gravity, ISS itself is maybe now infested with bacteria, little bugs and fungus, insects on the ISS MIR and Shuttle were unable to fly normally and tumbled in weightlessness, some decided to stop flying and started walking, its still potential place to study insects, a massive lab for experiments.
NASA had plenty of insects die in space, Russia, Europe and China have also studied living things in space.
Bees?
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/198 … hment=true
'The lack of relative-motion visual stimuli necessary to maintain flight may also have been responsible for the floating responses of the bees. In addition, it may have been that the food supply provided was inadequate for the bees and this may have led to fatigue with resulting poor flight control responses and floating.'
fruit flies may suffer the effect of space just like human astronauts and it seems their insect hearts were significantly smaller.
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-fruit-fli … space.html
' profound structural and biochemical changes to their hearts.'
Missing the Feeding Time Leads to Death?
https://www.beeculture.com/bees-in-space/
Officials speculated that this type of feeder, which had to serve all three insect types, may not have been practical for honey bees based on the fact that all 14 bees that went up in the orbiter died in their flight box apparently from insignificant nutrition.

Before you transport anything to Mars you might consider could you breed something hardy enough to survive in extreme weather conditions even inside a Biosphere there might be extremes even inside your Martian colony. In the Biodome you might need an insect happy and tough enough long cold days the sky fogged over with dust clouds, maybe even colder higher altitude pressure in case your dome has a leak...maybe hibernate, maybe easy to handle, can your bee tolerate fine grain dust and cold, would your bee take low level radiation, electromagnetic spectrum from gamma , could it put up with toxic iron minerals, the chlorines, Perchlorate contamination in food, water, not so fragile but after putting up with this hardship on a new planet, Mars dust is thought to be bad for animals, do you want a less hard working stingless bee or a hard working bee with a stinger, also be a 'friendly' bee not be aggressive to humans who may live on this new colony.

If you want the insect to to planned work, even before genetic engineering a lot of it will be about your Bee's bloodline, its history, its breed. Your Best cow, your Fish breed for the pond, your best ethnic race bloodline of pony for horse people, your Breeder for Pets, the Dog breeding is the practice of mating selected dogs, is there a reason they are such a way...bees are the not the same with heritage?

I met people who sold honey and from what I understand It highly depends on your breed or ethnicity of bee
Here are my thoughts on creating working creatures for Mars.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9898
What ever you do whatever bee you breed do not follow the example of Brazil where they released aggressive new breed of terroristic gangster bees across the plains and jungles of Americas in 1957. The Dawn of the Space Age from the USSR and in Brazilian lands the Birth of a New Breed of Killer Bee across the Americas that Refuses to Work and Kills people. If you take a Bee to Mars and with Mars having a different hue in its atmosphere with dusts, you mixing new Bee Races, a different gravity will the Bee still healthy flying, different toxic dusts, will it have the same attitude, be able to see those trees and plants and flowers like they did back on Earth?

I'm not sure if all the Aussie Bees hibernate, I do not believe they do or form a "winter cluster." There are a lot of Australia’s diverse habitats, some are sand hot and dry, other are cold snow capped mountains, other areas are dull, windy and rainy, some are more tropical steamy tropical rainforests in the far north, others bury into sand like ants and snakes, Kangaroo Island has tehse Bee that look like Flying Green Jewels, the Green Carpenter Bees. The Tasmanian Bumble Bee is found at higher altitude, I believe many Aus Bees might be foreign, some might be invasive, there was also a European bumble bee maybe introduced for farming, people began breeding mongrel bees, they would mix a colony from Arabia, India, Africa whatever place, a bad bee can attack a human, kill animals, a good bee I guess can assist inside a Mars biosphere, help Crop grow inside a Biodome, help with horticultural activity.
Solitary Bees - While you could in theory have something like this on Mars maybe it will not give you Wax or Honey. For example they Do Not live in colonies
http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane … terBee.htm

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-05-31 09:13:19)

RobertDyck · 2021-05-31 09:04:57

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

The Blue banded Bees are a good suggestion...

In post #3, I suggested sending honey bees to Mars. However, blue banded bees from Australia hibernate. So based on research from one scientist in Australia, could we duplicate conditions that place blue banded bees into hibernation, but doing it with honey bees?

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

I'm not sure if all the Aussie Bees hibernate...

They do. That's the point. Blue Banded Bees: Potential Pollinators of Glasshouse Tomatoes

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-05-31 10:48:24

I believe the Honey Bee Colony Hive is more important for a New Planetary Production Farm than many of the Solitary Bee

Also this bee blog says
https://bcolonycollapsedisorder.blogspo … phere.html
' Although these plants and trees can often be pollinated by solitary bees also their main pollinator is the honey bee.'

Most inspects seem to have died in space however getting any potential bee insect colony to survive all the way to Mars might be the real challenge.

RobertDyck wrote:

So based on research from one scientist in Australia, could we duplicate conditions that place blue banded bees into hibernation, but doing it with honey bees?

I'm not a Bee expert but I've been around them a few times, I believe it easier to breed in a new trait but hard to keep the traits, you want a blue bee after some time of breeding you got it, you want a hibernation bee you got it, you want a hardy bee that can survive cold you got it your Queen will probably breed with another Bee someone who has that trait.
but your new Queen always wants to run away to breed with a new bloodline and fresh meat, almost impossible to keep that new local girl next door bee you just created. You only have 1 Queen now but she's going to fly around, flirt with random guys and have lots and lots of potential random 'husbands' lets say each introducing their own different trait, good and bad different to the original Queen. Maybe you could hand pick every single individual bee, you could lock the bee colonies inside some Giant Aircraft Hanger or Far Away Island and give them all the illusion of a free environment, the Queen will have lots and lots of mates she then stores the sperm she collects in a special organ which in her Nest she draws from to lay eggs for that Bee Hive the rest of her life. Sometimes the Queen will be put on a diet so she can go partying, its usually because her fatass is too fat to fly, her workers they typically keep her alive, they carry away her waste and actually digest her food for her, with no constant nurse like care of her attendants, the Queen would die off as a big fat blob unable to grown herself and covered in her own filth. Drones going on that Date with a Queen think of the BlackWidow Spider, the Bee Drones Die After Mating! could you control breeding at this levl? I'm not sure if its possible for artificial insemination or controlled open mating for a creature of this size.

I'll need to go and chat with those guys doing honey when all this lockdown virus nonsense is over, insects can be genetically engineered but right now things are best done naturally. As I understand once you breed a certain type of bee that isnt a problem you will already have the conditions met now having bred your new super bee for Mars. The big issue is keeping your line healthy and alive and keeping your current blood with all those different type of bee in your new colony, you will have a new blood line or racial type of bee or tribe of bees, once your Queen mixes with Bees from other regions it loses its characteristics, new xeno blood will be introduced that made the original character of the bee disappear. I guess its like you have the breeds of Poodle, German Shepherd, Dachshund wiener dog, the Japanese Shiba Inu, the Mexican Chihuahua, Dogs can have issues by inbreeding too much but if you don't have the very similar type of Dogs marry and breed with the same Breed-Type you just end up with some mongrel and maybe none of the breed trait you originally wanted. You would need to control the breeding and the thing about bees is you cant just lock them in a box for weeks and months and years, lock them in they aren't allowed to be free and fly around they are not going to be healthy, feed and breed, the Queen actually breeds outdoors and in mid air while partying and speed dating with a bunch of other dudes.

there's an interesting site here with bloodline charts
http://glenn-apiaries.com/principles.html
Personally I like honey, I don't like those suits because they look uncomfortable and hot, also I dont like stings.

The breeder of the bee they have built many types bees that are gentle, bees that are bigger and bees that are smaller, bees that are quicker and bees that are more hairy, bees that overwinter well poor sunlight no heat no problem, bees that work harder with increased honey production, bees that can sleep through long winters like a bear and even bees that fight off disease and toxins, kungfu wrestle biting bees that defeat their giant Asia Hornet attackers and bugs and mites, they have also screwed things up and built aggressive creatures like the Killer Bee that proliferates like a weapon of mass destruction across the Americas. Noobs of Bee or unique Bee Newbies can be created its keeping the new bee bloodline that's the problem. Breeding the new bee isn’t the problem, you can breed that stuff into a bee I think the problem is the Hive nature of the insect world, the Queen will always breed with a bunch of new guys and there suddenly ends the gene line, within a few years or few months an entire eco-system of old Native Argentina, Thai or Australia bee could suddenly be replaced by any other invader bee bloodline from any other part of the globe. It is easy to lose the character of a bee but because they inter relate it is important to have 'genetic diversity' and this need for diversity risks losing what makes each local made breed unique. They communicate by scent and dance, the Queen controls her people by pheromones if her pheromone runs out the colony can suddenly turn on her and kill her. Also Colony usurpation happens, a massacre two women go to war like Elizabeth of England vs Mary, Queen of Scots, the usurp is when an alien summer swarm takes over an established colony. Any Egg Larvae in a colony I believe has potential to be a Queen, in larval stage a 'Nurse Bee' might start feeding royal jelly protein to help the Queen become a Queen, the Royal Jelly allows for the new Queen to remain fertile while leaving the worker bees sterile.

Sometimes more than one Queen will be born and the Queens from the same lines of blood heritage will have a civil war and fight to the death. In some other insect worlds queens join together to co-create new nests, a phenomenon known as colony co-founding. The problem with honey bees occurs after the queens are bred and they leave the breeders hands. The traits bred into honey bee queens in carefully-controlled breeding programs soon disappear when the daughters of these queens fly out are allowed to mate in the sky with others, the Queen enters a new sex-determination system, she will go and fly off have her party and breed with 10 or 15 guys and later return to the Hive, it is a sex determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs, the Queen breeds she goes speed dating with open stock. Within a generation or two, the Queen becomes a new or older race, descendants of these super bees are right back to square one. The Bee also has only one gene on one chromosome that determines sex, diploid drones kind of failed drones that had a doubling up of their genetic instructions, they do not survive and I believe are cannibalized by other bees within the same colony, the normal drone is a male honey bee its role is a sexual duty to mate with the Queen, the male bee technically has only a mother, the Motherland, the Motherhive and no true genetic father, its genealogical tree is unusual, each Bee subfamily has the same mother but who knows how many different almost random fathers. Polyandry think of some woman getting into the baby making business, not Married but she's up in court and judge judy is screaming at her fraud and she's collecting Benefit from multiple papas and Baby Mama payments that rolled away and fly off to some new joint, Panmixia well that's going back to those drugged up Studio 54 nightclubs, lots of mixing and the party days of Rome, you know those degenerate dirty Orgy pictures of the temples of Indian sites and Greek baths, the 'Panmixia' thing the means random mating, the Queen might possibly also retain the DNA from previous random sex partners 'Microchimerism' I know it happens in fruit flies I'm not sure if it happens in bees but I'm guessing it does. I believe a certain hive could have random traits pop up again or drop off, certain genes to be turned on and off. Once the Queen runs out of fertile birthing material, she cannot mate again. She is simply killed off by the bees themselves or another Queen maybe a weird alien Queen comes along and replaces her.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-05-31 11:34:55)

RobertDyck · 2021-05-31 13:01:16

From post #3

RobertDyck wrote:

So this raises the question: could a honeybee larva be kept placing them in pure royal jelly and refrigerating to 8°C? Larva fed nothing but pure royal jelly develop to become a queen. ... Could honeybee larva be transported in pure royal jelly, in a plastic cell, stored in a cooler with an active refrigerator? ... Feeding a honeybee larva pure royal jelly will ensure it becomes a queen. The hibernation cell could be plastic, but cap with a "queen cell" made of moulded bee's wax. That would ensure the queen could get out when fully developed. ... For Mars, could we put a larva into hibernation for 6 months? Transportation from Earth to Mars?

And to be clear, I'm saying humans make the "queen cell" cap. You can buy bee's wax commercially, moulding that is pretty easy.

Notice this doesn't require breading. This is just specific conditions to cause hibernation. I also suggested this could be used by industry on Earth, so we could get industry to pay for this research.

For Mars we would have to transport drone larvae as well. Queen and worker larvae are the same, food at larval stage determines whether it develops into a queen or worker. But drones are different, they have different genes. Young queen bees on Mars will require males to start a hive. Again, I'm suggesting transporting larvae in pure royal jelly, refrigerated to 8°C. That should put the larva into hibernation.

That's what does it for blue banded bees. I am proposing that environmental conditions put bees into hibernation, not genetics. Genetics of blue banded bees simply affect their behaviour.

Ps. Anything on Mars will have to be in pressurized greenhouses. That seals bees in. So bees will be carefully controlled. You don't have to worry about uncontrolled breeding on Mars.

louis · 2021-05-31 17:24:36

Much as I love bees here on Earth and believe we should do everything to protect their viability as a range of species I have my doubts about bees on Mars, certainly in the early decades and prior to terraformation. I just don't feel they fit in with the a pressurised air system that well. They certainly, on Earth, have many parasitres, fungi and all the rest in their hives. What might be released into the pressurised atmosphere if we start importing bees?

I don't accept that we would be dependent on bees for pollination for some (not all, of course) crops. I am sure we could develop robots that can effect bee-like pollination in controlled farm hab settings.

tahanson43206 · 2021-05-31 18:33:44

For Louis re parasites on bees ...

In an earlier post, I reported on research/study/experiments that show a promising path.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 81#p180181

The idea (as I understand it) is to select males who keep themselves clean (groom themselves) so their genes can be passed along to a next generation.

The reminder from either RobertDyck or Mars_B4_Moon about the challenge of maintaining a genetic line might be ** less ** on Mars, since bees won't be intermixing there.

***
Nature took millions of years to evolve bees.

Your faith that humans can develop equally effective pollination robots is touching.

I estimate it would take an Apollo scale investment to achieve duplication of bees.

In reports that appear in the media from time to time, it appears there are research teams engaged in solving the problem for military and commercial purposes having nothing to do with bees.

It ** could ** happen, but it won't be accomplished by a kitchen table student experimenter.

(th)

louis · 2021-05-31 19:06:18

That's a bit like telling the Wright Brothers back in 1900 "It took evolution 2 billion years to get something to fly...and you think you can fly in the next ten years?"

Unless I am very mistaken, what a bee contributes to the pollination process is pretty simple ie walking into a flower and getting pollen deposited on it that it will then deposit on another flower. I am sure there will be technical challenges but I can't see how that wouldn't be quite easy for a robot to replicate. It could either be done on a macro scale where you have a lot of (sticky ended) probes push at the plant - so law of averages gives you pollen on some probes - or it could involve lots of micro cameras directing probes to the flower target. I think the first would be more successful.

I see however that people are already working on robotic pollination:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN3ZNe1aeoA

I am not such a fan of the drone idea - I think wheeled robots in a controlled farm hab setting would work better. But it seems highly likely bees are not strictly necessary to achieving cross-pollination.

Ah I see someone has already realised my conception pretty much:

https://www.wired.com/story/robotic-pollinator/

Always best to do some research first before getting in the pulpit, TA.

tahanson43206 wrote:

For Louis re parasites on bees ...
In an earlier post, I reported on research/study/experiments that show a promising path.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 81#p180181
The idea (as I understand it) is to select males who keep themselves clean (groom themselves) so their genes can be passed along to a next generation.
The reminder from either RobertDyck or Mars_B4_Moon about the challenge of maintaining a genetic line might be ** less ** on Mars, since bees won't be intermixing there.
***
Nature took millions of years to evolve bees.
Your faith that humans can develop equally effective pollination robots is touching.
I estimate it would take an Apollo scale investment to achieve duplication of bees.
In reports that appear in the media from time to time, it appears there are research teams engaged in solving the problem for military and commercial purposes having nothing to do with bees.
It ** could ** happen, but it won't be accomplished by a kitchen table student experimenter.
(th)

RobertDyck · 2021-05-31 19:41:37

*sniffle* I want bees. I could post a picture of my favourite honey liqueur. My girlfriend likes baklava, although she can't eat tree nuts. Anaphylaxis.

I posted that a greenhouse for cocoa trees for chocolate would have a tunnel with negative pressure so breeze down the tunnel would be faster than midges could fly. That would blow midges back into the tropical greenhouse. Bees fly faster, but we could do something similar.

Google claims maximum flight speed of Western Honeybee is 32 km/h, but I can't find a reference.

The British Bee Keepers Association: How fast can honey bees fly?

The normal top speed of a worker would be about 15-20 mph (21-28 km/h), when flying to a food source, and about 12 mph (17 km/h), when returning laden down with nectar, pollen, propolis or water.

We could just use an airlock to keep bees in.

louis · 2021-06-01 06:43:16

I had some mead once - did I mention that before? An acquired taste perhaps!

RobertDyck wrote:

*sniffle* I want bees. I could post a picture of my favourite honey liqueur. My girlfriend likes baklava, although she can't eat tree nuts. Anaphylaxis.
I posted that a greenhouse for cocoa trees for chocolate would have a tunnel with negative pressure so breeze down the tunnel would be faster than midges could fly. That would blow midges back into the tropical greenhouse. Bees fly faster, but we could do something similar.
Google claims maximum flight speed of Western Honeybee is 32 km/h, but I can't find a reference.
The British Bee Keepers Association: How fast can honey bees fly?
The normal top speed of a worker would be about 15-20 mph (21-28 km/h), when flying to a food source, and about 12 mph (17 km/h), when returning laden down with nectar, pollen, propolis or water.
We could just use an airlock to keep bees in.

RobertDyck · 2021-06-01 11:08:37

louis wrote:

I had some mead once - did I mention that before? An acquired taste perhaps!

I made mead a couple times. At the time I as a member of a medieval recreation society called the Society for Creative Anachronism. Turned out pretty well. My father made home-made wine and beer when I was a child. I rented a house with my then fiancée in Toronto in 1990. It was an older couple's retirement home before they had to move to a nursing home. It had 6 grape vines and 14 fruit trees: full size Macintosh, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Bartlett Pear, another Pear, Prune Plumb, and one tree grafted so it was half Golden Plumb and half Red Plumb. Grape vines were Italian wine grapes. And they left their wine making equipment behind. I had to! When I returned to Winnipeg, I bought a house and planted a variety of grapes that survive our colder climate. I've made wine from grapes grown in my yard, as well as wild berries picked from a park. Yes, there are places you can still go to pick wild berries: blueberries, raspberries, Saskatoon berries (aka June berries), chokecherries. I taught my sister's first husband how to make wine. His wine always was sweet and fruity, mine was dry. He liked dry wine, and liked sweet and fruity. So we traded. Wasn't until long after my sister's divorce that she told me what they did different. They used bread yeast instead of wine yeast.

Irish Mist is Irish whiskey with heather honey and spices. Glayva is scotch whisky with heather honey, tangerine and spices. They're both made with heather honey, so both have a rich red colour. As you can imagine, anything with scotch is more expensive. But the liquor mart in this province has discontinued Irish Mist. So now that home distilling is legal, I'm making my own. Heather doesn't grow in Canada, it's too cold. You can't get heather honey here. So I'm using buckwheat honey with nutmeg and allspice. It's pretty good. Need to tweak the alcohol further.

There are various uses for honey. And various pollinators. Years ago I posted a list of pollinators, most of which don't sting or bite. But only bees produce honey.

louis · 2021-06-01 13:05:26

I am amazed you could grow grapes in Winnipeg! lol Maybe that's where the Vikings' Vinland really was!

RobertDyck wrote:

louis wrote:
I had some mead once - did I mention that before? An acquired taste perhaps!
I made mead a couple times. At the time I as a member of a medieval recreation society called the Society for Creative Anachronism. Turned out pretty well. My father made home-made wine and beer when I was a child. I rented a house with my then fiance in Toronto in 1990. It was an older couple's retirement home before they had to move to a nursing home. It had 6 grape vines and 14 fruit trees: full size Macintosh, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Bartlett Pear, another Pear, Prune Plumb, and one tree grafted so it was half Golden Plumb and half Red Plumb. Grape vines were Italian wine grapes. And they left their wine making equipment behind. I had to! When I returned to Winnipeg, I bought a house and planted a variety of grapes that survive our colder climate. I've made wine from grapes grown in my yard, as well as wild berries picked from a park. Yes, there are places you can still go to pick wild berries: blueberries, raspberries, Saskatoon berries (aka June berries), chokecherries. I taught my sister's first husband how to make wine. His wine always was sweet and fruity, mine was dry. He liked dry wine, and liked sweet and fruity. So we traded. Wasn't until long after my sister's divorce that she told me what they did different. They used bread yeast instead of wine yeast.
Irish Mist is Irish whiskey with heather honey and spices. Glayva is scotch whisky with heather honey, tangerine and spices. They're both made with heather honey, so both have a rich red colour. As you can imagine, anything with scotch is more expensive. But the liquor mart in this province has discontinued Irish Mist. So now that home distilling is legal, I'm making my own. Heather doesn't grow in Canada, it's too cold. You can't get heather honey here. So I'm using buckwheat honey with nutmeg and allspice. It's pretty good. Need to tweak the alcohol further.
There are various uses for honey. And various pollinators. Years ago I posted a list of pollinators, most of which don't sting or bite. But only bees produce honey.

RobertDyck · 2021-06-01 13:32:28

louis wrote:

I am amazed you could grow grapes in Winnipeg! lol Maybe that's where the Vikings' Vinland really was!

Valiant grapes. Developed at the South Dakota experimental research farm. A cross of a commercial grape with a Manitoba native grape. Yes, there are Manitoba native grapes; they're basically a seed and a skin. Valiant grapes are as small a blueberries, but the vines grow like weeds in this climate. My 6-foot fence was covered top to ground for 50-foot length by just 2 vines. Taste similar to Concord grapes, just enough different that you know they're a unique variety. They do have seeds. It produced enough to fill my 54-litre demijohn every year. Until the neighbours replaced the fence and chopped down my larger vine.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2020-11-01 23:04:46

Bees

#2 2020-11-02 06:58:56

Re: Bees

#3 2020-11-29 17:17:47

Re: Bees

#4 2020-11-29 17:58:45

Re: Bees

#5 2020-11-30 21:44:25

Re: Bees

#6 2020-11-30 23:42:41

Re: Bees

#7 2020-12-01 08:12:14

Re: Bees

#8 2020-12-01 08:18:36

Re: Bees

#9 2020-12-01 08:29:55

Re: Bees

#10 2020-12-01 10:38:59

Re: Bees

#11 2020-12-01 11:59:12

Re: Bees

#12 2020-12-30 17:43:38

Re: Bees

#13 2021-05-21 11:30:13

Re: Bees

#14 2021-05-31 07:44:14

Re: Bees

#15 2021-05-31 09:04:57

Re: Bees

#16 2021-05-31 10:48:24

Re: Bees

#17 2021-05-31 13:01:16

Re: Bees

#18 2021-05-31 17:24:36

Re: Bees

#19 2021-05-31 18:33:44

Re: Bees

#20 2021-05-31 19:06:18

Re: Bees

#21 2021-05-31 19:41:37

Re: Bees

#22 2021-06-01 06:43:16

Re: Bees

#23 2021-06-01 11:08:37

Re: Bees

#24 2021-06-01 13:05:26

Re: Bees

#25 2021-06-01 13:32:28

Re: Bees

Board footer