I think it might be hard to get raw data (from the hive) due to the time of year, but you can draw on published data.
-types of pollen utilized by bees
-plants utilized by bees for nectar
-bee reproduction (i.e. drone production supersedure, emergency & swarm)
-Production and utilization of bees wax
-bee genetics (very interesting and MUCH different than mamal genetics)
-pest that infect hives/bees
-bee diseases, how they are detected, spread, and affect the bees
-Hive defense
-bee communication


I'm sure there are a lot more but that gives you something to start thinking about. Great topic! Good luck.

 

Look at the hive performance diff between young and old queens

 

Possibly look at some meta analysis on a subject like treatments or pollen or varoa. There is a lot out there but I haven seen anyone try to aggregate data sets from all known sources over the past 50 or more years. Would be interesting for someone to actual interview or try to interview all know queen breeders....

 

Try to figure out why so many truckloads of bees keep turning over on US highways!

 

Something that fascinates me is bee decision making. It's obvious that they make decisions...... which space a swarm will move to, when to supersede the queen, which bees leave and which bees stay during a swarm, etc.
But how do they decide? Does one bee decide and communicate to the rest? How do they compare and contrast information, if they do?

That would be what I would look into.

 

If I had the time and resources I would start 6 hives from packages and feed all 6 for 4 weeks. Then stop feeding 3 packages and the only intervention is to give them space to grow when they need it... no feeding, no treatment, not even frame manipulation. With the other 3 I would supplement feed, treat for mites, and do anything within my power to grow the hive. I would like to see the results between population, drawn comb, honey and health of the two different ways of caring for bees.

 

You might want to read about the Pollen substitute patty comparison test that Randy Oliver did. You might get some good ideas from him. www.scientificbeekeeping.com

I liked how that experiment had both a positive control group and a negative control group, and how he applied his statistics. The very low value of "p", the likelihood that the null conclusion was not the result of his data, is proof that he did some good work. (I had to look that one up, too! Wikipedia explains experimental "p" value quite well.)

I doubt you have enough bee colonies to repeat such an experiment, but Randy's website has lots of terrific articles involving bees and science. A great place to start.

Incidentally, I did some impromtu research on SanClemente Island a few years ago. I volunteered with Channel Islands Restoration, a non-profit group that removes invasive plants and grows and plants native species on each of the 8 Channel Islands.

The gal running the show out there was the ecologist, she found out I'm a beekeeper, and requested that I carry along a net, a kill jar, and several vials because I would likely have several hours at the top of the canyons while one guy rappelled into the ravines and killed fennel and other invasive plants.

I sat near a prickly pear cactus that was in bloom, and caught 20 different kinds of insects. I surprised her with a report about how each type of insect was behaving, pollinating the flowers of the prickly pear for that week's bloom.

Now she knows who the most important pollinator bees and other insects are for that area of the island - the metallic green osmia mason bees. They dive in a flower, dig like crazy for up to 22 seconds, go to the next flower and repeat until they carry twice their body weight in pollen.

Good luck, and keep us posted!

 

Find a local beekeeper and ask for an interview and a close-up look into a hive; most beekeepers would be happy to show off their hives. This way you could get some nice pics of hives and even a selfie with your bare hand in a (pleasant) hive.

 

RESEARCH IDEAS:

Research questions for European Honey Bees:
(note, all of these could be expanded to include differences in various European races but would probably be most useful on common Italian bees first)

What is the natural spacing of honey comb and brood comb and drone comb? (1 3/8", 1 1/4"?) Again, You will have to let the bees build what they want in a box or some kind of hive where there are no frames or starter strips. I've done it by putting 1 x 2's up against each other for the lid on top of a standard Langstroth box. This is just to allow you to remove a 1 x 2 and not have to break all of the comb. You can also tip the box up on end to get into the combs. Basically after the bees have filled out the box you would run the bees out (I smoked and drummed them but you could use bee go) and then cut each comb out and document what kind of comb it is (worker brood, drone brood, honey, pollen etc. and distribution of cell size), and what distance the center of this comb is from the adjacent combs. Also how thick the comb is. You can tie the brood comb removed into frames and give it to a hive to hatch and smash the honey comb and strain it. The bees, of course would have to be regressed to natural size for this to be valid information on what bees naturally do.

Do the sizes of cells being built by natural sized bees, change over the progression of the seasons?

Do the sizes being used for particular purpose change over the progression of the seasons? (some small cell and top bar beekeepers have observed a preference by the queen for small cells to lay in in the spring and larger cells in the fall)

Do the Varroa home in on cell size or on pheromones given off by the drone or worker brood. In other words, is the
preference that Varroa have for drones bases only on cell size or other pheromones? Some research has been done that was only looking at one or the other and it seemed that they prefer drone larvae over worker larvae in worker cells and in a different study, drone size cells over worker cells when drones were in both. But those could be combined or replicated to delineate this more specifically

HONEY AS FEED:

Honey Effects on Nosema incidence:

What is the current research on Nosema as relates to overwintering on honey?

Are rates of Nosema cerana affected by pH? (try raising pH on sugar syrup to see if this is the main reason) Are there other differences when matching honey and syrup with the same pH?

Are there differences between overwintering on honey and syrup due to other nutrients? (proteins in small amounts, trace minerals etc) Antioxidents?

What is there in dark honey that is not in light honey (since it reduces Nosema more than light honey)

Honey Effects on Brood diseases (AFB, EFB, CB, SB etc.)

Is there more resistance to AFB, EFB, CB, SB etc. when using honey?

Does the acid inhibit the microorganisms at all?

Are there any other factors that inhibit the microorganisms?

Does using honey INCREASE or DECREASE any of these diseases?

Does it encourage any of these microorganisms or does it in any way speed up the activation of spores of any?

One could just try to culture any or all of them at different pH

OTHER RESEARCH:

What purpose (if any) do drones serve in the hive? (other than the obvious use as mates)
Warm brood?
Sound an alarm?
Boost morale?
Natural Varroa Magnets so the workers don't get damaged?

What purpose (if any) do subcastes (larger and smaller bees in the hive from natural comb) serve? Do they make more subcastes at different times (more large in the fall and small in the spring has been observed but not documented except on a small scale)
Do larger and smaller bees extend the number of flowers that can be utilized?

 

Awesome suggestions, Michael!

One could also build an observer hive and a Apidictor, a listening / amplifying device that can predict swarming up to 3 weeks before it happens. The electronic schematic is listed in the build-it-yourself section here on Beesource. Build 2 - one to keep and one for the school to continue researching for years to come.

There is a lot to learn yet regarding bee behavior and sound communications.

Marking individual bees as they hatch, and watch / listen to their behaviors and sounds. Keep a calendar on them, noting their activities. You just may well come up with something nobody has yet discovered.

The Apidictor has also been used to determine AHB (Africanized Honey Bee, aka. "Killer Bees") from other races of bees. AHB make a lower sound. Worth researching, and worth building for long-term learning.

 

Oh, high school science projects! I'm world famous (seriously) for proposing fusion reactors that high school students could build, and have, winning major prizes.

An Apidictor is fun but you can do a better job with a smart phone app these days than that contraption in the archives. Fun project for a high school science project, as FFT apps are out there either free or for cheap. Supposedly nurse bees produce a slightly higher buzz than mature bees due to their wings being softer. The relative strength of the two frequencies is supposed to predict swarming. There is also a short hiss made when the hive is slapped, the characteristics of which are supposed to predict swarming. Find the article in the archives, but use modern electronics.

Somebody here fed sugar syrup with food coloring in it to bees, changing the color from time to time, and then looked thru the frames and got a stained glass effect. Its a bit less technical than a fusion reactor, but maybe could be turned into a science project. Would at least make a pretty display.

A radar tracking system for individual bees is out of reach of a high school budget, but individual bee tracking of sorts would be possible by marking bees. Put cheap video cameras on, for example, a feeder and a hive entrance and track bee movements. The really cool thing was the recent discovery that bees can do more than navigate from a hive to a food source (per the waggle dance instructions they've gotten), they can navigate from food source to food source, such as an old rich food source that has shut down, to a food source described in a waggle dance. This is trig ... they are plotting the last leg of a triangle, and compensating for the movement of the sun in the process.

Hive instrumentation, such as automated weighing, should be a good job for Arduino microcontrollers, or the other similar brands. Some people here have tinkered with it. These are priced right for high school science projects.

I think I have seen bees figure out how to escape from a slightly open window much faster than a housefly can. Are they smarter, or just have better search instincts?

On the bee decision-making, I've pretty much convinced myself that bees do what they do because they are individuals that really enjoy it, and not some kind of slaves to the hive mind. I think they experience "positive reinforcement" when they do something good for the hive, like finding nectar. The other term used is "reward". Either term we humans equate with pleasure, although behavioral types tend to frown on that term, and we certainly can't know what the bee really feels. But they do something rewarding, and then are more likely to repeat it. My latest suspicion is that they may even be capable of feeling pride. This behavior of individual bees, with some feedback mechanisms (waggle dance, tremble dance, a couple of other "dances", various pheromones, being ignored by the others when what they did was not needed) apparently result in some kind of consensus behavior that creates the hive mind. This is deep stuff, full of possible projects. I'd love a test that can prove that bees experience pride.

Generally, bees are really, really smart for insects, and an IQ test for them would have to be interesting.

 

How about: How do bees find those empty walls behind outdoor light fixtures, etc. Do they have infrared detection/vision to find warm spots in exterior walls or empty/hollow trees and limbs? They don't crawl over every exterior wall of every building do they?
Sounds like you have a lot of possible options for several projects from all the suggestions listed. Good luck.

 

I need ideas for a research paper or experiment that I can do on bees. Any ideas?

Oh how boring.

If you want to have some fun and grab your class mates attention then do one on beekeepers. Beekeepers are much more interesting creatures. There is not a one that doesn't have their own way of doing things. Most are convinced that the bees really need them. They all have the same facial expression so you can't tell if they laugh at us. Maybe their butts is how they laugh at us. I see a lot of mine wiggling their butts.

 

Well, I can think of one simple ascertation about beekeepers that could be proved or disproved by a simple test. The general wisdom is that if you ask two beekeepers a question about what to do in a particular beekeeping situation, you will get three answers.

I think we've already blown that one out of the water right here. But maybe it would be good to quantify just how bad the problem really is.

 

Varroa; to treat or not to treat, that is the question. Do mite bombs exist? Will mites evolve in such a way as to become resistant to OAV treatments, and if so how quickly?

And the biggest argument of all; Are the treatment folks breeding a better mite or are the Treatment Free folks flooding the world with mite bombs to such an extent that the treatment folks can't kill them all?

Good luck,
Alex

 

track population of bees verses population of varroa. Correlate to life cycles in a wintering colony. Determine optimal time to treat so as to increase overwintering success. ( done do in a scientific manner).

 

I think you need to add some more info such as time you have to do this in. If you have to do it in the next month or three I'd say add a remote temperature recorder in the hive near the brood chamber and monitor outside and inside temps and do a write up of how they regulate temps. you can make graphs and stuff with numbers which is what they love. regular people have no clue how bees do bee things so imo although the above ideas are great they might be too complex to do without a lot of time and resources and when something more simple will get you an A. Now if you're going to the national science show then we have to do something like the above! no way beesource is gonna lose at a national science contest

 

Being in Charlotte, I would deeply appreciate research on good bee plants for this area. There are many excellent references on bee plants, but not for here. I have noticed that some of the plants that are supposedly great bee plants are just ignored by my bees.

 

For which one might want to take advantage of NASA (hey, always looks good to be a NASA collaborator on a science fair project):
http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/

 

You might get some ideas by looking at the SARE grant program for your state. This is the Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education grant system. Most of the money goes to universities and graduate research projects, but they usually have some set aside for small projects. Our club did one a few years ago in which we compared the survival of package bees to locally produced nucs. The nucs won. I think the grant money for that was around $1500, not enough to make a living on but enough to fund an impressive high school science program. But the timeline on SARE grants probably does not fit your schedule.

It is kinda neat, though, to go down a list of small projects your neighbors have done on small budgets, often producing real science.

http://www.southernsare.org/SARE-in-Your-State/North-Carolina/SARE-Funded-Projects