Actual Monitor Hive Readings

     As a service to applicators, we will be making observations on our monitor hives, which are within reach of blooming cotton fields, on the time that bees cease to carry cotton pollen. (Bees are carrying cotton pollen each morning before sunrise.)

    We will try to make observations one or two days per week, more if there is a change in pattern, through the point in time when late bloom becomes unattractive to bees.

   This is for informational purposes only. It is a volunteer service. We are not liable for any use or misuse of this information. It is the applicator's responsibility to comply with label directions and we encourage applicators to keep their own monitor hives to aid in this. Clemson Extension should be providing this service to cotton growers/applicators, through a hot line and/or web page, with monitor hives at the Pee Dee and Blackville Experiment Stations, but so far has refused to do so. I have offered to donate the use of the hives for this purpose.

   Next year, it is our hope that Clemson (or perhaps they will give us a grant?) will provide a continuous camcorder recording of the entrance of a monitor hive so as to show cotton pollen being brought back.

Readings from Monitor Hives in the Coastal Plain of SC.

   Hives will be monitored, depending on where I am working, in Williamsburg, Florence, Clarenden, Georgetown, or Sumter Counties

7-29-99  Two hives observed from 8 am to 2 pm. They are in place to work about 100 acres of cotton within a quarter mile in Williamsburg County. There are also soybeans nearby, but they are not yet blooming. Bees were carrying cotton pollen at 8 am, and pollen gathering increased to a peak at about 9:45, with large pellets of cotton pollen.

   At the peak foraging period, the bees were still so widely dispersed in this acreage, that it took a while to spot any foragers in the field. An insecticide application between 8 and 11 am would have been devastating to these bees, yet their presence was not obvious in the field. When the hive/acre ratio is larger, say 1 hive per 3 or 4 acres, they become quite obvious (which gives a clue to the wild bee populations that used to exist in this area).

   After this peak time at about 9:45, pellet size gradually declined, as well as the number of bees with pellets. At 11:45 only an occasional returning forager, about 1 in 30, was carrying pollen pellets and these pellets were very small. The remainder were carrying water. The temperature was 94 F.  Most bees were carrying only water from then on, but an occasional forager with tiny pellets was noted. The temperature peaked at 101 about 2:30. A cooling shower occurred at 7:30-8pm but total precip was barely measureable. Soil moisture levels are dropping rapidly in the extreme heat, beginning drought conditions exist.

8-14-99  Drought conditions have become more severe. There has been no significant change in the weather, and the pattern of foraging has had no dramatic change, just a gradual reduction in hours.. There was a brief shower in the evening of 8-12-99, but corn was still wilted the next day, so the rain didn't have much influence. Bee foraging began at dawn, but cotton pollen dropped off rapidly as the dew dried. Bees were done carrying cotton pollen before 11 am.

8-23-99  Late bloom on cotton is less and less attractive to bees, and only a little cotton pollen is now being carried at all. Rains have finally given good soil moisture conditions, but the foraging pattern did not increase, as expected, most likely because rains came so late. Monitoring will now be discontinued.

    Both the weather and the foraging pattern were remarkably consistant from day to day, during the peak part of the cotton bloom, so there was little reason to monitor more often. Sunup to late morning, is a typical foraging pattern for the hot, dry weather which is common during cotton bloom.

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