Manuka honey project

Today, we visited a special place over in the Martinborough called Te Awaiti.

We were there to do a survival check of the Manuka trees planted for a trial. 

The site we visited was on private property called Te Awaiti Station. It has been owned by the same family since 1838 and is the size of Wellington harbour. It was massive!

The stretch of coastline was incredible. We stopped and gathered Paua, Kina and crabs. A bit further out were heaps of crayfish.

More Field work

Bees at the feeding station

 A short video showing the bees at the feeding station. I was lying under tree between testing as it was very hot in my bee suit. The sugar syrup ran out and the bees came and got me to refill it. This has happened a number of times since and has got me wondering who's training who?

This was one of my first times collecting bees from the pollen dispenser. I have the front blocked up so the bees will land on the front of the hive. They're really quick and if I don't, I will miss collecting the bees that I have marked with a dot of paint on their thorax. I was still a bit nervous at this stage but since this video, I have become very relaxed and calm.

Lab Work

Once I have collected all of my bees from my data collection, I need to count the pollen grains on each bee. Even though the bee looks clean, they can carry anywhere from 50,000 to over 1,000,000 pollen grains on them. Obviously this is too much to count EVERY grain of pollen on 600 bees so I need a process to make it easier. I will attempt to explain it below.

At the bottom of this blog is a problem for you to work out!

My first step is to take the bee out of the Freezer and defrost her (The workers are all females)

I then have to ensure the solution (Stain) that the bee is sitting in is well mixed. this machine is called a Vortex. It mixes the solution

Here is a bee in an Ependorph vial being mixed on the Vortex.

This tool is used to precisely measure out liquids. I have set it to extract 0.01ml of stain containing pollen from the bee.

I am placing it onto a special slide called a hemocytometer slide.

The hemocytometer was invented by Louis-Charles Malassez and consists of a thick glass microscope slide with a rectangular indentation that creates a chamber. This chamber is engraved with a laser-etched grid of perpendicular lines. The device is carefully crafted so that the area bounded by the lines is known, and the depth of the chamber is also known. It is therefore possible to count the number of cells or particles in a specific volume of fluid, and thereby calculate the concentration of cells in the fluid overall.





Basically, I use this slide by breathing on it to create vapour, I slide a thin piece of glass onto it and it creates a capillary action. I squirt on some liquid and the capillary action sucks it under the glass plate. When I look at it under a microscope, I can see a 3 x 3 grid so I can count the pollen in a contained area.


Here is the data recording sheet that I use to record my results.

This is the grid I see under the microscope. Each section of the 3x3 grid is 1mm squared and is broken down into further increments. The finest are in the centre section.

 This is the microscope I am using. It costs over $35,000!

 To work out how many pollen grains are on each bee, I have to look at two 3x3 grids and record down how many pollen grains are in each square.

Here is an example for you to work out!

Grid A                                       Grid B

12     13     13                         19     11      11 

7      13      12                         13      5      17


19    10      7                            11     20      12

I then add up each Grid

Grid A =

Grid B =

I add these results together. Grid A + Grid B = Total C

I divide Total C by 18= Average D

I then times Average D by 5000 to work out how many pollen grains were on the bee.

How many pollen grains did this bee have on it ?

Leave your answer in the comments section below

Curriculum Day 2 - Wellington

As a part of the Leadership component of the fellowship, we have to attend 4 workshops to develop our understanding of the Nature of Science and the curriculum.

As a part of our second workshop, we visited Carter Observatory. If you are in Wellington and are looking for something to do, I would highly recommend visiting here. They have incredible displays, a planetarium and an amazing telescope.

Carter Oservatory



Carter Observatory is New Zealand's longest-serving national observatory. Carter's name commemorates Charles Rooking Carter, who gifted £2,240 from his estate to the Royal Society of New Zealand to establish an astronomical observatory in Wellington for the benefit of the people of New Zealand. Parliament established the Carter Observatory in 1937 and it opened its doors in 1941.
Carter became a base for astronomical research in New Zealand. Work began with solar investigations and when new staff joined during the 1970s it expanded to include variable stars, galaxies and asteroids. Carter Observatory became New Zealand's National Observatory in 1977.

 The Thomas Cooke telescope is a beautiful, historic 9 3/4-inch refracting telescope that is routinely used as the main telescope for visitor viewing at Carter.

The building has been lovingly restored and is a heritage building.

A cabinet containing hundreds of lantern slides from observatories around the world

 A transit telescope which were essential items used for early time keeping.

These are real Meteorites! You can touch them and pick them up, they're unbelievably heavy! This was one of my highlights.

This is a real piece of the moon. It is a slice of a meteorite that came from the moon. The moon has been pelted with meteorites over it's history as it has no atmosphere to protect it. As meteorites strike the moon, chunks fly off into space.

Before I knew this, I asked if it came from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The Curator said "No, the samples that the Astronauts brought back with them are extremely valuable and even  the smallest piece is too expensive for small organizations to buy. 

(From Wikipedia) "Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration are currently considered priceless. In 1993, three small fragments from Luna 16, weighing 0.2 g, were sold for US$ 442,500. In 2002, a safe, containing minute samples of lunar and Martian material, was stolen from the Lunar Sample Building. The samples were recovered; in 2003, during the court case, NASA estimated the value of these samples at about $1 million for 285 g (10 oz) of material."

Of Interest at Massey

There are so many exciting things to see and read about at Massey. Every department has displays and information posters regarding the projects they have worked on.

Here are some of the more interesting things I have seen.





 This is a real skeleton of a Cheetah in the Ecology Department. It's amazing! You can see by the way they've displayed it that the Cheetah is extremely nimble and powerful. I love looking at this display.







This is a huge glass tank FULL of cockroaches! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! They breed them for research work and so that the students can run experiments and dissect them to view under microscopes.

This is Zebra Stone. There are lots of interesting rocks, fossils and meteorites displayed in the Geology Department. I thought this one was particularly interesting. The article below talks about this six hundred million (600,000,000) year old mystery from Australia.

It's mushroom season. These beautiful specimen's were growing in Bledisloe Park alongside Massey. I have to walk through this bush reserve to get to my bee hives

This is one of the bridges in Bledisloe Park.

Dunedin - Leadership course

The 1971 Daimler DS420 that picked us up from the airport and drove us around Dunedin.
This car was originally brought to drive around Queen Elizabeth II when she toured New Zealand in 1977.

It was also used to drive around Nelson Mandela when he toured New Zealand in 1995.


 The interior was stunning walnut.

Otago University by the river.

The staircase at the Dunedin Train Station. It has been rated in the top 10 train stations in the world due to its oppulance and incredible detail.

One of the oldest churches in Dunedin.

Outside the train station.




















The Dunedin Fire Station

1967 Jaguar 420G

We used this Jaguar to tour Dunedin.

The steepest street in the world!

Dunedin Street art

The Greggs factory. Dunedin either smells of coffee (Greggs) or Chocolate (Cadbury).

The students say that some nights the factory does it herbs and spices and all the streets smell of Oregano, garlic or other Gregg products.

The University

The view from my room overlooking the new stadium and the harbour.

Some of the fellows enjoying the ride in the Daimler. Felt a bit like Royalty!

Workshop

 My favourite part of the fellowship so far has been the access to the Massey Universtity Ecology department's workshop. I love tools! But what I love more is having access to everything you need under one roof. When you want to create something, there are no barriers to you making it.

This is the Mill. I used it today to mill out grooves in a perspex sheet to create a bee feeder.

This is the saw bench I used to create the Triwaks pollen dispenser.

Band saw... So many applications!

Mitre saw. 

Drill press

The sugar feeder I created using the Mill and mitre saw