Looks like twins to me. It's near delivery time. I've seen a couple of does (maybe the same one) sort of pacing and hanging out alone lately.

SF Margo has baby doves--multiple families--in a flower box just outside her kitchen window in Inner Sunset San Francisco. So sweet.

SF Margo was here in DC for a sad visit--memorial service for our suddenly and shockingly gone Marv--but it was great to spend time with her. She visited the National Gallery on her last day here (nice photo, huh?), and I sent her home with some slightly mis-matched but home-made socks.

From the Washington Post. I wonder if Las Vegas casino managers tell the waitresses to touch every customer on the arm as they deliver the drinks?

SCIENCE NEWS

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

When considering taking a risk, a woman's touch may be decisive

We know a mother's touch can make a young child feel secure enough to try new things. It turns out a gentle touch from a woman can evoke that response even in adults, according to new research.

In a study published online in Psychological Sciences, researchers assembled a group of undergraduate business students, both men and women, for several experiments in which they were asked to invest money with a sure return or take a riskier gamble with a larger payoff. (Real money was used in two of the experiments: Participants could keep their earnings or be required to pay off any losses.). The students had their choices explained by a woman who gave them a light touch on the back of the shoulder, by a man who shook their hand or by a woman who did not touch them.

The researchers found that people touched on the shoulder by the woman were more willing to go for the riskier option. They concluded that "certain types of female physical contact reactivate the sensory and perceptual states that are associated with the feelings of security originally evoked by maternal physical contact in infancy" and that this feeling encouraged the risk-taking.

"There is a lot of work in developmental psychology connecting maternal-infant touch to sense of security, attachment, and consequent risk-taking (which for babies means checking out some strange toy on the other side of the room). We drew an analogy with adults," study co-author Jonathan Levav, an associate professor of marketing at Columbia University Business School, wrote in an e-mail.

Asked whether some of the participants might have been motivated to make riskier behaviors to show off to the woman lightly patting them, he said, "All the conditions in which women did the touching were paired with control conditions in which the same women were present but did not touch. Thus, the 'show-off' effect should be the same in all conditions. What we find is that it is the touch that leads to risk taking, not the mere presence."

Levav and co-author Jennifer J. Argo of the University of Alberta point out in the study that "the influence of maternal physical contact is so pervasive that its effect is observed even in arachnids; young lycosid spiderlings who experience a greater degree of maternal contact subsequently exhibit more extensive exploratory behavior in a novel open field arena."

-- Margaret Shapiro

Very interesting day in the hive. Larvae, pupu, and basically stillborn bees. Who I killed in the process of "working" the hive.

You can see the black eyes forming in two pupa near the bottom of the middle picture; also one at the top I think.

I had to remove a lot of burr comb--or maybe it's called drawn comb??--from the bottoms of several frames. While I inspected it later it occurred to me that some of these could have been Queen bees in the making. There are so many things to check for when you go into the hive!

I didn't see any mites. So far, so good.

Goslings. The family was bigger last week. I suspect the turtles napped a couple. Or maybe hawks?

Foxglove (digitalis) and Mexican evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa) --- truly deer-proof flowers.

The pale pink primroses are one of my favorite spring flowers because they come back reliably every year. I don't know where they came from --- I don't think I ever planted them. The only trick is learning what they look like when they first come up. For years I yanked them out of the ground because I thought they were weeds. Well, I guess they ARE weeds. They spread like wildfire so not everyone loves them. But I do.

The foxglove is so pretty and stays in bloom a long time. The deer never ever touch it. Unfortunately it's a biennial and I'm not interested in buying new plants every third year--but wouldn't a full bed of them be great?

More burr comb. A lot more.

My lovely bees keep building comb up, on top of the frames. I want them to build comb only sideways, on the nice frames I gave them. They don't understand that. So I have to go into the hive and scrape away all that hard work. Seems cruel doesn't it?

Marv Hurwitz, 1933 - 2010

Best friend to so many. He will be missed by all. Susan summed him up well.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom.

I've posted about this before (and I'll probably do it again). My mother planted some pink petunias in this pot in the summer of 1996. Sadly, she died suddenly the following winter. After all those years these flowers still come up every year. Same soil, same pot. Petunias are sold as annuals but this is proof that under the right conditions everything is perennial. Or maybe my mom is saying hi to us every year. Happy Mother's Day to a great mom!

The pond next door. And goslings!

Photo credit: Doug Jones.

In my bee get-up. If I'm trying to hide my bees from the neighbors I'll need to get a camouflage outfit. It's pretty obvious what I'm doing.

Possibly burr comb? Not sure whether to remove it or not. It's so pretty and they worked so hard on it. Look at the precision of those cells!

I peeked in my hive 2 days OK and everyone looked fine.

The up-side-down plastic pails on the right are full of sugar water. They're sitting on some twigs to keep them raised up a bit from the frames. Teeny tiny holes in the lids allow the bees to stick in their cute little tongues and lap up sugar water. Today I will don my hazmat outfit and make a proper visit, removing frames, searching for the Queen and new brood, and refilling the pails if they are empty. Also will look for signs of mites.

My 89 classmates in the beekeeping class, along with the several hundred members of the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association, have a listserve where they chatter about bee issues. Lots of people have had swarms this spring. I have such mixed feelings about swarms. It's a sign of bee health BUT it's also a sign that your bees want a new home.

Swarming, as defined by Wikipedia, is:
... the natural means of reproduction of honey bee colonies. A new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming. In the prime swarm, about 60% of the worker bees leave the original hive location with the old queen. This swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees. Swarm clusters [often] hang... off of a tree branch.

And here's how Wikipedia describes managing a swarm:
There are various methods to capture a swarm. ...One method that can be employed on a sunny day when the swarm is located on a lower branch or small tree is to put a white sheet under the swarm location. A nuc box is put on the sheet. The swarm is sprayed from the outside with a sugar solution and then vigorously shaken off the branch. The main cluster, hopefully including the queen, will fall onto the white sheet and the bees will quickly go for the first dark entrance space in sight, which is the opening of the nuc. An organized march toward the opening will ensue and after 15 minutes the majority of bees will be inside the nuc.

"Organized march"---don't you just love that?

Not much going on bee-wise. Temperatures hovering (spelled wrong for days and days!) between the mid & high 50s.

They drink from this pedestal bird bath, which is right behind the hive.

Day 4. They seem happy!

Deer-resistant, huh? Not in my yard. Had to move this cutie to the protected area.

Also not immune to the damn deer: coral bells and columbine. Maybe by "deer-resistant" all those books and websites mean "the deer won't climb over a 7-foot fence to get at them."

Pileated woodpecker.

On an old stump just outside my deer fencing.

Bees, end of Day 2.

I found this poor little bee this morning at 10 AM but felt confident by 6 PM that the group had survived very well. But now, at nearly midnight nearing the end of Day 2, I'm sure I've killed, or am killing, the entire colony. All because of that sugar water that isn't flowing properly (and that they may not even need). This may cause so many problems! The entire enterprise may be over in a week. I want to run out there right now and hank out the feeders. But I already looked inside the hive at about 8 PM (my first infraction of the "do not open for 5-7 days!" rule). And I don't feel like suiting up at midnight, getting my smoker going, and trying, in the dark, to carefully remove the feeders. Oh the worry. I'll know something tomorrow I guess. It's supposed to be showery and only 65 degrees. Today was very sunny and 70. Will the bees even want to come out on a showery 65 degree day? If they do, I'll breathe a bit easier. If they don't...
Ommmmmmmmmmmm.

Bees, Day 2.

Top picture is at about 10 AM this morning. A few bees outside the hive but just a few. Bottom picture is at about 4 PM this afternoon. Lots of bee activity. I successfully moved the 5 frames full of bees into the hive, and most important of all I located my Queen. She seemed calm and well attended. I installed the aggravating, frustrating, and possibly incorrectly constructed (by me) sugar water feeders in the top of the hive. Now I just have to worry all night that I'm drowning my bees.

Birth Day. April 22, 2010.

The drive home from the Honeyfield Apiary in Williamsport, MD, to my house in Silver Spring, MD, was uneventful and the bees were very well behaved. In this cardboard box, coated with wax, are 5 frames of Italian honey bees. And one Carniolan Queen from Kona, Hawaii. Carniolans are originally from Slovakia. I was told to place the box gently on top of the hive, remove the plastic webbing from the front door, and wait until the next day to move the frames into the hive box.

Healthy Happy Herb Haul.

Hellebores. Among my very favorite perennials. They bloom early and reliably (and beautifully), and stay in bloom all summer.

She's young but not too young to be having a fawn this year. Behind my house, in a place where I first see fawns in the spring.

My bee field day at Big Jim's bee yard in Mt. Airy, MD.

That's Big Jim pulling out a frame full of bees. And I'm one of the white-clad folk in the crowd watching him work. He got stung three times (on his hands--he doesn't use gloves and is oh so casual about the stings). The only other stingee was my husband Doug, who just went along for the ride, didn't wear any protective clothing, and was wandering around the field. He was pretty casual about it too.

There she sits. Awaiting her colony of bees.

I know that beekeepers highly recommend telling neighbors about newly adopted bee hives. But I'm still not so sure I'm going to. My house is at the end of a street, facing a park--which you can see in the background. I continue to ponder what's best for everyone. For now, keeping my mouth shut is best for everyone. (Actually, in general it's always best to keep one's mouth shut. Or as my friend Margo W. says "WAIT"--Why Am I Talking? That was the single best piece of advice anyone's ever offered me.)

David Brooks, a wise conservative, says "Media Psychodrama"--Perfect!

"Let’s all stop paying attention to Sarah Palin for a little while. I understand why liberals want to talk about her. She allows them to feel intellectually superior to their opponents. And members of the conservative counterculture want to talk about her simply because she drives liberals insane. But she is a half-term former governor with a TV show. She is not going to be the leader of any party and doesn’t seem to be inclined in that direction.

"The Sarah Palin phenomenon is a media psychodrama and nothing more. It gives people on each side an excuse to vent about personality traits they despise, but it has nothing to do with government."

Full interview here.

Still crazy for violets after all these years. So reliable, so care-free. They are the anti-tulip, which is neither reliable nor care-free.

My makeshift bee suit. Got it for $10 on eBay. I'll add elastic to the cuffs and pant leg bottoms.

It's used; was billed as "AN, OFFICIAL, GENUINE, AUTHENTIC, U.S., MILITARY ISSUED, PAIR OF WHITE, MILITARY EXPLOSIVES HANDLER'S COVERALLS. 100% COTTON."
Note creative and interesting use of commas.

If you need to handle any explosives you can borrow my suit.

I don't expect to ever be this casual, but you just never know.

I'm fascinated by that nasty device that appears to be blending the bees into bee soup, but in the end it seems to be full of living bees that get dumped back into the hive boxes. So much to learn.

Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Becca & I were nearly alone in this home, so I imagined living here. Nice modern art collection. Modern in the relative sense