Got artwork? Tatoos? I wanna see ‘em!

I’ve always thought insects are not only biologically interesting creatures, but I’ve always thought they have a sort of creepy beauty about them.

So if you have insect artwork, tatoos or anything like that E-mail me at cheshire.entomoblog (at) gmail.com. I’ll post entries on the blog with accredation and a hyperlink.

Shackling up the blog for awhile…

I’ve had a great time in the blogosphere, and I’ve enjoyed watching this weblog grow as I wrote more and more posts that folks were interested in.

However, I guess it’s time for me to shackle this thing up. I’m preparing for my next step which is most likely going to involve a cross-country move (I live in the center of the US and 3 out of the 4 schools I will be applying to are near the coasts) as well as a few other misadventures.

I’m going to be taking a large amount of credits to graduate, and my classes next semester will be taking up a majority of my time. Something has to go, and this is the first thing that’s being cut.

Never fret, though. The reason I’m doing this isn’t because I’m dissatisfied with the blogosphere in any way. On the contrary, I love doing this and I consider it practice for when I eventually do some science writing on the side.

Unfortunately, due my current time restrictions (which will only get worse) I’ve been able to write something once a week or so, and even that’s been difficult.

So with this post, I bid the blogosphere farewell…for awhile. I’ll return when I can afford the time to blog on a regular basis and churn out random facts about insects.

Mayflies invade Dubuque

Mayflies have an interesting relationship with folks who live near rivers. Hexagenia mayflies are very common in Iowa rivers and they tend to emerge in huge swarms which cover nearly everything in sight. The swarms can be so big that they’re occasionally picked up on weather radar. They can cover bridges in such numbers that they can cause traffic accidents.

It’s a common myth that mayflies only live 24 hours. It’s partially true…some species in the family Behningiidae have adult lives for only 15 minutes. Many others have adult lives that last about 24 hours. Some can live up to a few weeks as adults.

Mayflies live most of their lives under water. They’re a surprisingly diverse group…there are currently 24 families recognized. Some are predators, and some filter food out of the water. The species portrayed in this video is a grazer…essentially the cows of the Mississippi river.

Mayflies are odd insects in that they have a winged immature stage. Insects normally get wings when they moult into an adult, but in the case of mayflies they have a winged sub-adult stage that’s covered in tiny waterproof hairs.

LOL…altie-med emergency room.

More fun with bees and fruit…guess what keeps them from stinging you?

Awhile ago, I wrote a post about honeybee attack pheromones. It’s a strange coincidence that the chemical that makes things taste like bananas cues bees into attack. Well, in this issue of Medical Entomology (which has some other cool articles that I might blag about), some scientists looked a chemical that keeps bees from attacking.

I’m interested in this article because I’m working a summer job as a beekeeper. My boss and I are complete opposites, both politically and when it comes to bees. I’m liberal, he’s kind of conservative (more so than me)…I get swarmed by bees whenever I walk by a colony and he can work without gloves. It’s an odd coincidence that they react differently to me than to him.

Westboro Baptists Coming to Ames.

I hate to see this display of hatred in my hometown, but it looks like the Westboro Baptists are coming to Ames on July 24th and protesting at Iowa State University on the corner of West Lincoln and University…right by Jack Trice Stadium. I know I have some readers who go to ISU and will be equally disheartened.

I know of one anti-protest being planned, and undoubtedly there will be more. From the facebook invite:

If we can get enough people behind this I would love to see a rally against the hate that the Westboro Baptist Church is going to try to preach here in Ames. Let’s show them that their message of hate is not accepted here in Ames, in Iowa, in America, or in this world!

According to their website’s schedule they are going to rally here in Ames on July 24th so come support humanity by rallying against them.

Here is the Westboro Baptist Church website if you are not sure what they are about: www.godhatesfags.com

It would be amazing to see a large group of people show up and show these people that hate is not the answer. Please no violence or illegal actions. The more level headed we remain the stronger our message can be.

So invite every single person you know, parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, everyone to show up, bring signs, American flags, wear t-shirts, sing, do whatever you want to show these guys that hate is not the way.

I think this is the right attitude to have. I’m not normally a big fan of anti-protests…especially for groups like the Westboro Baptists who are pretty much universally despised. It gives them undue attention, and there’s always the possibility for things to get out of control because of heated emotions and a mob mentality. On the other hand, some think we need to show them that a lot of people in Iowa…especially at Iowa State…see their views as reprehensible and unacceptable.

There’s something that I’d like to point out in the post, though, and I’ve put it in bold. This is meant to be a PEACEFUL, RATIONAL counter-demonstration. Violence only mars the message and dampers the credibility of the message you want to send.

It’s important to remember that these are people. Nothing more and certainly nothing less. As fucked up as they are, they’re human beings. Viewing them as such puts you far above them.

If you’re wondering exactly what they’re protesting…here’s what they wrote on their site:

Iowa State University – We’re back to tell you God H8s You! SW corner of W. Lincoln Way & University Blvd What’s up ISU? Long time, no see. While we are in the area to picket Marshalltown, we thought we’d stop by and say “God Hates You”; “You’re Going To Hell” and “God Hates Fags” Iowa says “It’s Okay To Be Gay”, and was the first to begin giving $ to little perverts for no other reason than they brag about being little perverts. God Hates Iowa, and all who live there are cursed. Deuteronomy 11:26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; 27 A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day: 28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known. 29 And it shall come to pass, when the LORD thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal. 30 Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the champaign over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh? 31 For ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the LORD your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein. 32 And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which I set before you this day. Obama’s gonna destroy your State with his “economic program” and then you are going to eat you little babies – you heard it here FIRST. AMEN!

I’m not exactly sure what they’re saying here. Is it because there are scholarships given to LGBT students, because ISU has a Gay-Straight Alliance? Iowa’s recent gay marriage supreme court ruling? This badly written and horribly punctuated diatribe is completely meaningless and borderline illegible.

They’re obviously unbalanced and they weren’t invited at anyone at ISU, unlike Tom Short. They have little acceptance, even in the far-right community. If anything, this visit will only set their efforts back (a little bit), but it’s a chance to show support for the LGBT community.

So with a bit of trepidation, and with some mixed feelings…I’ll stop by if I can make it.

Oh…and if anyone has a boom-box and a Rick Astely CD: Please stop by. I’m not a fan of the Heckler’s Veto because it infringes on the individual’s right to free speech…and I think that even unpopular views have every right to be espoused.

Still, though…I think it would be funny to see this happen to the Westboro Baptists.

Circle Of The Spineless #40

I recently hosted Skeptic’s Circle, but I’ve got to tell you…COTS feels a lot more like home. I’m just as much an entomology student as a skeptic…but I try to focus this blog on insect biology as much as I can with occasional forays into other subjects.

So without further ado, I give you this month’s COTS submissions!

PETA’s entomological ignorance…a bit worse than I thought

The other day, I went on a rant about PETA acting overly sanctimonious by sending President Obama a flytrap because he had the audacity to swat a fly on national TV.

Well…one of my readers forwarded me this article about humane cockroach control. When PETA doesn’t have to distort any facts, they actually write halfway decent natural history articles…which genuinely surprises me. The only thing I can really see wrong in the bee/wasp article is that they referred to the worker wasps as ‘male’ and the central reproductive as the ‘queen’. The first kind of jumps out at an entomology student…the workers in bee and wasp colonies are sterile females. The second is a bit more esoteric…wasp ‘queens’ are usually referred to as ‘foundresses’ instead of queens. Different social structures and all that.

In short, they’re not the best articles. If I were to turn them in for one of my classes, I’d expect a passing grade. So they’re above AIG in this respect.

But let’s dissect the ‘humane cockroach control’ article, shall we?

PETA’s entomological ignorance.

PETA is one of those groups that bases it’s public statements on what it can best display it’s righteous indignation at.

Remember Obama killing a fly at his interview?

Here’s the video:

Well, guess how PETA responded?

But now People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling it an “execution,” wants the commander-in-chief to show a little more compassion to even “the least sympathetic animals.”

“Believe it or not, we’ve actually been contacted by multiple media outlets wanting to know PETA’s official response to the executive insect execution,” a blog on the group’s website explained. “In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.”

The group has sent Obama a device that traps a fly so it can then be released outside.

Wow.

Now, why would an entomologist think this is stupid?

A very short intro to beekeeping

Bug girl has a post about all the different crops that are brought to you by insects.

I figured I’d give you an inside scoop as to how crop pollination works, since I’ve dealt with bees before.

One of the most common misconceptions about beekeeping is that they mostly produce honey. A lot of beekeepers certianly do this, but most of the money involved in beekeeping actually comes from the pollination service they provide. About 80% of the fruits and vegetables on your table are the product of bees and if we include other pollinators the total probably climbs.

The actual pollination part is relatively simple…a beekeeper simply loads up one of his colonies early in the morning and drops it off in the proper field for awhile. The bees have about a two mile radius where they forage, and they’ll most likely utilize the closest food source first. They’ll forage at other flowers, but they’ll hit everything in the area eventually. Depending on the operation, cages might be used to cover the crops to contain the bees or prevent the introduction of foreign genetic material.

However, the real work in beekeeping is in the upkeep. You have to know a lot about insects to keep bees. You need to know about their diets, their social structure and even their commensals.

Bees are interesting insects. They’re social and have a reproductive division of labor. They have sterile workers, a reproductive queen and, of course, the boy bees…the drones.

The sterile workers and the queen are both female. All the bees in the colony start out bathed in something called ‘royal jelly’ as a food source…it’s essentially a mix of pollen and nectar. It has a high protein content. After a few days, the workers are switched to nectar or honey as a food source and as a result their reproductive organs instead develop into venom sacs. The end result: the queen can lay eggs, but can’t inject venom when she stings. The workers can sting but generally can’t lay eggs (as always in biology, there are exceptions…but that’s another post).

How the boys are formed is actually quite interesting, as well. Bees reproduce through haplodiploidy…the males are haploid (n) whereas the females are diploid (2n). Their sex lives…well, I’ll just let Isabella Rosellini explain it through green porn:

A beekeeper can tell what’s in each cell by the size and shape of the cell. Queen cells and drone cells are enlarged, but only the queen cells point down. If a colony gets too large, the workers will build a queen cell around a young larva and they’ll swarm-the virgin queen will fly off to mate and will take a bunch of workers with her to start a new colony. After she starts developing eggs, she becomes too big to fly.

To prevent losing a lot of bees, beekeepers try to will split the colonies apart before the new queen hatches and move them to a new location where she can mate with another male. There are also ways to fool the colony into thinking it’s time to swarm that require artificial manipulation of the colony.

As I said earlier, there are also commensals in bee colonies you need to occasionally watch out for. Ants and dermestid beetles will scavenge dead workers and cockroaches will use colonies as shelter. However, there are some critters which pose a danger to bee colonies.

There are occasional pests like small hive beetles, which eat the bees out of house and home by boring through the wax. There are also wax moths which will burrow through your backup wax frames if you’re not careful. Small hive beetles can be very serious, but I don’t think we’ve seen them much in Iowa.

Varroa mites are probably the biggest problem posed to the beekeeping industry right now. They’re small mites that suck hemolymph (~blood) from bees and can deform workers when they feed on pupae. Workers can hatch with deformed limbs and wings, rendering them unable to fly. If workers can’t fly, they can’t gather food for the colony and the colony ends up starving. They’re also thought to vector Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), which is strongly correlated with Colony Collapse Disorder and is considered one of the most likely culprits.

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

There’s a lot of complexities with this problem, however and we probably won’t know for a few years. There’s a mad scramble to study the virus and it seems they’re starting with figuring out the evolutionary history. There’s not a whole lot known about it yet…we know it’s been here for awhile, but we’re not sure exactly when it got here or exactly what it’s role is. A lot of entomologists think that the mites weaken the bee’s immune systems to reduce rejection by their host. Hypothetically, the virus could take advantage of the bee’s weakened state.

However, I’d like to stress that there’s still a lot of ongoing research and the story continues to unfold.

So, yeah…there’s a brief introduction to apiculture.

Single parenthood and navigating the treachery of academia.

I tend to try to stay away from personal topics, because I like to blog pseudoanonymously for a multitude of reasons which are explained very well here (the exact same reasons, actually). So I’m not going to go into great detail about my situation. To be honest, if you go to ISU I’ve got to be an open secret. Entomology single-parent undergrad…that narrows it down to like two people I’m aware of.

I am a single parent…I’ve mentioned this a few times here on the blog. I go to school and maintain a very high GPA. My other job puts me in contact with a lot of other single parents (or soon-to-be single parents), many of whom are interested in going back to school. I’m asked for advice on this quite a bit because it’s something a lot of people have trouble pulling off. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.