Here are some tiny rove beetles I found the other day that push the limits of my current macro lens. In the first three pictures you can kind of see how the wings are folded up under the elytra (the shell-like covering of the wings of beetles, which rove beetles have considerably less of than most other beetles). In the last two pictures the wings are completely unfolded. I know the wings are pretty thin, but it is still impressive to me that they can just fold up their wings and put them away.
It is getting very close to spring, both by the calendar and otherwise. But in the hoophouse, it is already spring. To be specific, I’d say it is around the beginning of April in there. The hoophouse is unheated, so it goes through seasonal temperature cycles just like the rest of the landscape, but it goes through somewhat different temperature cycles. It tends to warm up quicker during the day, especially if it is sunny (on sunny days the temperature difference can be extreme, but there are louvres that open automatically at a set temperature to moderate extremes). At night, though, it can get almost as cold as outside (but at least it is sheltered from wind and snow).
The fact that it isn’t just consistently a little bit warmer inside the hoophouse seems like it would make estimating the equivalent season difficult, if not impossible. But I realized, a couple years ago now, that I don’t have to figure it out; the weeds growing in the hoophouse had already done that. Because of my ‘photojournaling’ observations, I had pictures of when different plants flowered, or went to seed or fruited (or even just when they started coming up). So all I had to do was look at what the plants were doing, and see when they had been in the same stage outside in previous years.
At first, I wondered if the results would be consistent. Would all the individual observations, taken together, all point to the same time frame? Or would different plants handle the seemingly non-equivalent conditions in different ways? But it turned out they did all point to the same time frame. So, I figured, if the plants in the hoophouse were doing what they would do in March (for example), I could plant crops that would be planted outside in March in this area, and they should do well. That has seemed to work pretty well, and gave a method to follow for figuring out when to plant what in the spring even when we were new at growing in a hoophouse.
These are some pictures of snowflakes on my glove that I took the other day. They were big wet snowflakes, but there was one I found that was more normal sized.
It has finally started to look like winter around here, giving me a chance to practice my ice and snow photography. Quickly dropping temperatures seem to be necessary for some of the tiny ice crystals I look for and the conditions haven’t been right for seeing them until recently.
For a couple years now, I’ve been taking pictures of the sunlight reflecting off of the snow, but none of them have had the colors I notice in the snow while taking the pictures… after a bit of experimenting I noticed that the colors only show up when the snow is out of focus, so I intentionally blurred a few pictures to test it…
An out of focus picture with specks of color didn’t seem like a particularly good end to that line of experiments, though, so here’s what I came up with:
When it gets too cold for the honey bees to leave their hives it can be much harder to tell how the colony is doing. The hives look pretty lifeless on a cold winter day. There may be some dead bees scattered at the entrance. This is actually a good sign, especially if they are recently dead and as long as there aren’t too many of them. It means there are still live bees inside, and they’re cleaning out the dead. If there’s a warm day and the bees can leave the hive, they’ll clean off the entrance board of their hive and fly the dead bees away from it.
Another sign to look for when there’s snow on the ground is little flecks of yellow in the snow: bee poop. Bees do not poop inside their hive unless they are sick or it stays very cold for a really long time and they just can’t get out.
The snow also seems to melt a little faster right on the entrance board when the bees are doing well. Other than that, you can’t tell much unless you get a really warm day and are able to take a peek inside, or at least see bees flying around the entrance. But for most of the winter, the bees will be hidden inside their hive, clustered together around the queen, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat, and eating the honey they stored away during the summer. And then, at some point, usually around mid February here (if not even earlier), the queen will start laying eggs and the bees will have to raise the temperature inside the cluster (to above 90˚F) because the larvae need it extra warm to survive.
This time of year, after the last of the fall color has died away, but before it has started snowing regularly (or at least freezing the water in the creek and elsewhere into whimsical shapes), is pretty drab at first glance. There are always exceptions to be found if you look for them, though. Last year at around this time I wrote a post about rose hips, which are one source of color. This year, I’ve been finding myself taking pictures of mosses. They seem to like the cool dampness this season has to offer.
Here are a couple pictures I took last winter:
The snow is melting (for the moment) and I found the melt water dripping from the bridge into the creek. In one spot the drops were coming down very steadily, and I was able to catch the moment when the drop landed in the creek fairly easily. Here are a few of the pictures I took.
We recently got nearly a foot of snow, which is unusual for this time of year, and made for an unusual mix of fall and winter scenery.
I went for a walk in the woods yesterday, thinking it was about time to check on the witch hazel and see if it was flowering (it was) and kept getting distracted by other interesting stuff around. So, here’s a selection of what I encountered.
A couple of times this year, I have witnessed the ant colonies in the yard swarming. Or at least, that’s what I’m inclined to call it; as a beekeeper, swarming means colony reproduction to me. But the process is different for ants, and I’m not sure swarming is the right word for their colony reproduction. All the colonies send out their young queens and drones (is drones what it’s called for ants?) to mate and presumably hibernate and start new colonies next spring. The workers do not accompany them as honey bees do. Each colony sends out dozens if not hundreds of queens. The queens seemed reluctant to leave; it looked like the worker ants were herding them out, and appeared to be chasing and even biting the young queens. The queens have good reason to be reluctant; their odds for surviving their flight are terrible. There’s a reason each colony sends out so many.
By the time I started taking pictures, most of the queens had taken flight already, (this first part happens impressively quickly) and many of those that were left had damaged looking wings. They were trying to leave, and the workers were insisting, but their wings were causing them difficulty.
All colonies of a particular species of ant sends out their winged offspring at once, and for a few hours, the air is thick with flying ants. Not too surprisingly, any creatures that like to eat insects see this as a brief opportunity to feast.
I have seen ant colonies sending out their queens in previous years, but this year, not only did I see it happen twice, it seemed like there were just a lot more ants. It seemed like every few feet was another clump of ants, sending off their young queens.