The Enemy

Honey Bee Diseases And Pests

Honey bee brood and adults are attacked by bacteria, viruses, protozoa's, fungi and exotic parasitic mites. Additionally, bee equipment is attacked by other insects. Disease and pest control requires constant vigilance by the beekeeper.

American Foulbrood - (AFB) is a bacterial disease of larvae and pupae. The bacteria form highly persistent spores that can be spread by adult bees and contaminated equipment. Infected larvae change color from a healthy pearly white to dark brown and die after they are capped. Cappings of dead brood sink inward and often are perforated. Check for AFB by thrusting a small stick or toothpick into the dead brood, mixing it then withdrawing the mass. Brood killed by AFB will be stringy and rope out about inch. Colonies with AFB must be burned by a state bee inspector. To prevent AFB, feed colonies the antibiotic TerramycinÆ according to label instructions in early spring and fall. Allow at least four weeks from the last TerramycinÆ treatment until the first nectar flow.

European Foulbrood - (EFB) is a bacterial disease of larvae. Unlike with AFB, larvae infected with EFB die before they are capped. Infected larvae are twisted in the bottoms of their cells, change to a creamy color and have a smooth "melted" appearance. Because EFB bacteria do not form persistent spores, this disease is not as dangerous as AFB. Colonies with EFB will sometimes recover on their own after a good nectar flow begins. To prevent EFB, treat colonies with TerramycinÆ as described above.

Chalkbrood - Is a fungal disease of larvae. Infected larvae turn a chalky white color, become hard then turn black. Chalkbrood is most frequent during damp conditions in early spring. Colonies usually recover on their own.

Nosema - Is a widespread protozoan disease of adult bees. In spring, infected colonies build up very slowly or not at all. Bees appear weak and may crawl around the front of the hive. Discourage nosema by selecting hive sites with good air flow. Damp, cold conditions seem to encourage this disease. Treat nosema by feeding the drug FumidilÆ B in sugar syrup in spring and fall. Do not feed the medication immediately before or during a nectar flow.

Wax Moths - Are a notorious pest of beekeeping equipment. Adult moths lay eggs near wax combs, then their larvae hatch and begin burrowing through the combs to eat debris in the cells. Moth larvae ruin combs and plaster them with webbing and feces. Honey bees are usually very good at protecting their colonies from moth larvae. If moth damage is found in a colony, there was some other problem (usually queen loss) that weakened the colony first. Moth damage is most common in stored supers of comb. Protect stored supers by stacking them no higher than five hive bodies. Tape shut all cracks, put paradichlorobenzene crystals at the top of the stack and cover the stack with a lid. Replenish the crystals as they evaporate.

Tracheal Mites - These microscopic mites enter the tracheae (breathing tubes) of young bees. Inside the tracheae, mites block air exchange and pierce the walls of the tubes to suck blood. Symptoms resemble those of nosema. Bees become weak, crawl at the hive entrance and sometimes uncouple their wings so that all four wings are visible. Colony death rates are highest during winter and early spring. If you suspect tracheal mites, see your county Extension agent for help in diagnosing the disease. Infested colonies are treated with MiticurÆ or special formulations of menthol.

Varroa Mites - These mites are about the size of a pin head and are copper in color. Female mites cling to adult bees and suck their blood. Females then enter a bee brood cell and produce several offspring which, in turn, suck the blood of the developing bee. Infested colonies almost always die within three to four years unless they are treated. Colonies are treated with ApistanÆ, a formulation of fluvalinate. Because tracheal mites and Varroa mites are newcomers to the United States, control technology is rapidly changing and has not been well worked out.

Where to get Bees?

The easiest, and sometimes the best, way to start keeping bees is to buy two established colonies from a reputable local beekeeper. Buying two colonies instead of one lets you interchange frames of brood and honey if one colony becomes weaker than the other and needs a boost. Buy bees in standard equipment only. Competent beekeepers usually have one or two hive bodies on the bottom board with shallower honey supers above. Question the seller if supers are arranged differently. The condition of the equipment may reflect the care the bees have received, so be suspicious of colonies in rotten, unpainted wood. Once the colony is opened, the bees should be calm and numerous enough that they fill most of the spaces between combs.

Be sure each super has at least nine frames of comb. Inspect combs in the deep supers for brood quality. Capped brood is tan - brown in color. A good queen will have at least five or six combs of brood, and she will lay eggs in a solid pattern so that there are few skipped cells. Look for symptoms of brood disease and wax moth larvae (see the section on "Honey Bee Diseases and Pests").

Bee hives are easiest to move during winter when they are lighter and populations are low. Moving hives is a two-man job. Close the hive entrance with a piece of folded window screen, seal other cracks with duct tape, fasten supers to each other and to the bottom board with hive staples then lift the hive into a truck bed or a trailer. Tie the hives down tightly. Remember to open hive entrances after the hives are relocated.

Why Do Bees Need Flowers?

Bees, like humans, require carbohydrates and protein to survive. They are able to get both from flowers, deriving carbohydrates from nectar and protein from pollen.

Why Bees Need Nectar?

Nectar is the base of all honey. Nectar is a sweet carbohydrate secreted from glands in different plants, mainly flowers. However, not all flowers can be used by honeybees. Deep blossoms may hold a lot of nectar but a bee's tongue is not long enough to reach the nectar within.

Why Bees Need Pollen?

Pollen is a protein that bees use to feed brood and create royal jelly for the queen. Bees collect pollen when their hairs rub against the anthers of flowers. Their front legs comb the pollen from their backs and deposit it on their back legs, where it is raked by hairs into a pollen sac and compressed.

Video- How to set up a Hive

A video off the internet of how to set up a hive. But where would you get the bees from is there a UK website? Who do you call? RESEARCH

BBC News

Monday, 12 August, 2002, 09:54 GMT 10:54 UK

Space elevator takes off

Could the shuttle become obsolete?

Taking a lift into space may sound like science fiction but scientists are meeting in Seattle to discuss how to build such an elevator.

Seattle-based company High Lift Systems is looking into the idea, backed by a $570,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (Nasa).

The company is holding a two-day conference to discuss the technology and funding and hopes to begin construction within the next few years.

"Technology is now catching up with science fiction. It should be taken pretty seriously," said Brad Edwards of High Lift Systems.

"The technology's not quite here, but in the next couple of years the technology could be ready to consider construction of the first space elevator."

Catapulted into space

The concept is simple. The elevator is essentially a cable, attached at one end to an ocean-going platform.

Whoever puts up the first elevator could eventually own space for the next 100 years

Brad Edwards, High Lift Systems

At the other end it is connected to a satellite, in orbit 35,000 kilometres above the Earth.

Commercial loads, such as sections of space stations, and eventually, perhaps, human tourists, are then mechanically pulled up the cable and catapulted into orbit at a fraction of the present cost.

Dr Edwards says that whoever builds that first elevator, at a cost of $10bn, will have a huge advantage over any competitors.

"In the next 15 years you could have 10 elevators up, you could have large elevators, you could have thrown an elevator to Mars," he said.

"Now you can use those wonderful capitalistic practices and drop your prices to zero. Whoever puts up the first elevator could eventually own space for the next 100 years."

The European Space Agency, Nasa and investment companies are attending the two-day conference.

Nasa's Dr Robert Cassanova says that although the elevator has a lot of potential, there are still technical and financial problems.

He says that we should not expect to see that first lift into space for at least another 50 years.

Space tourism: We have lift off

Sir Richard Branson's spaceship Virgin Galactic has completed its maiden flight and will soon be carrying paying passengers, Stephen Foley reports

It is nine years since a US rocket scientist-turned-investment manager called Dennis Tito blasted into space aboard a Soyuz rocket for a seven-day stay at the international space station, becoming the first paying customer of the space tourism industry.

He was a passenger of the Russian space agency, and paid an eight-figure sum that some reports put as high as $20m for the privilege. What with the cost being that high – and the number of free seats being few and far between – it is hardly surprising that just six tourists had followed in his zero-gravity footsteps by the end of the decade.

This decade, however, could be a very different story: there are predictions floating around that space tourism could be a $700m industry by 2020, flying thousands of passengers a year as far as zero gravity and back, for the thrill ride of their lives. Tickets are on sale now, at $200,000 a pop, from the ballooning billionaire Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company passed another important milestone in its testing regime this week. Meanwhile, a range of other entrepreneurs are also piling into this new space race, for the first time convinced there might actually be some money to be made.

"People grow up just fascinated by space travel," says Will Pomerantz, of the X Prize Foundation, which organises competitions to encourage commercial space travel. "There are primitive emotions and instincts that drive people to it. It's loud, it's sexy, and it is in some senses dangerous, so it gets a lot of people excited. But the people who got into this as a hobby are starting to realise that it needn't just be that."

Virgin Galactic has already taken around $45m (£30m) in deposits for spaceflight reservations from over 330 people wanting to get into suborbital space, to see the curvature of the earth and feel the effects of zero gravity. The Hollywood director Brian Singer and the former Dallas star Victoria Principal are among the famous faces that plan to be on the first flights.

Sir Richard's six-passenger spacecraft, which he's calling the VSS (for Virgin SpaceShips) Enterprise, is the most advanced and apparently best-funded of the space tourism ventures in development. It has been developed by Burt Rutan, winner of a 2004 X Prize with a prototype that became the first craft to complete two consecutive trips into suborbital space carrying the weight of at least three people.

The VSS Enterprise will be carried to a height of 50,000ft attached to a mothership, and then launch the rest of the way into space. On Monday both mothership and Enterprise flew up to that height together in a maiden test flight. "Seeing the finished spaceship in December was a major day for us but watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, ground-breaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," Sir Richard said. "It comes as no surprise that the flight went so well, the team is uniquely qualified to bring this important and incredible dream to reality."

When Sir Richard first teamed up with Mr Rutan, the hope was that the first passenger journeys might begin in 2008; that they are now pencilled in for next year, or maybe 2012, is a reminder that many space dreams take longer to come to fruition than hoped – if they come true at all. Sir Richard's boasts of being four or five years ahead of the competition may not amount to statistical significance in this complex, technical area.

California-based Xcor, which is developing a two-seater rocket plane to get into suborbital space, recently signed a deal to export its technology for use in South Korea. Meanwhile, Armadillo Aerospace, founded by the computer game developer behind Doom, John Cormack, has been working on a craft that will take scientific payloads soon, and humans later. And, in the background somewhere there is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, who created Blue Origin and set up a spaceport in west Texas with the aim of manned flight by this year. His secretive company had gone silent for two years until dramatically re-emerging a few months ago with a $3.7m Nasa grant to develop a craft for orbital space flight.

"Virgin is definitely our lead dog in the field," Mr Pomerantz said, "and it certainly has the most publicity and the most visible partners, but we are starting to see others making great leaps and bounds in terms of their ability to fly scientific payloads. From a business point of view, you can start flying scientific payloads earlier in the testing regime, because of course they don't have quite the same safety requirements as people."

Entrepreneurs who build a business based on ferrying cargo could quickly evolve into passenger carriers, too, Mr Pomerantz said.

There has been a proliferation of prizes on offer for breakthroughs in space flight, in an echo of the early days of air travel, where Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris in 1927 in the Spirit of St Louis won him $25,000, for example. Google is sponsoring another X Prize, this time for the first commercial venture to put a robotic rover on the moon.

There also seems to be competition developing among different states in the US and regions elsewhere in the world for the opportunity of playing host to these pioneering space companies. Virgin Galactic got $300m from the state of New Mexico to subsidise Spaceport America in the Mojave desert, and the government of Abu Dhabi paid $280m for a one-third stake in the company and a promise to use the emirate as a hub for travel from the Middle East. There even appears to be feisty local campaigns in areas of Scotland, to win Virgin Galactic's business among three airforce bases.

And now Nasa is showering money, too. Its budget has been slashed and its programme to put a man on Mars has been scrapped, so it is focusing instead on seeding commercial ventures, and last month it offered $75m in grants to commercial operators that can put scientific payloads into suborbital space on its behalf.

"For everyone who has dreamt of participating in the grand adventure of spaceflight, this $75m commitment marks the dawn of a new space age," Alan Stern of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation said at the time. "As the commercial space industry continues to grow, I expect that we will see increasing numbers of payloads and people flying to space."

The early ticket buyers are most likely paying a premium price to secure their places in the history books. Observers expect that prices will quickly fall, perhaps to a half or even a quarter within the decade, which should stoke demand. A 2002 market research report from the consulting firm Futron is still viewed as a reference point for the nascent industry, since it polled the very wealthy individuals about their desire – and their fitness – to travel into space. It concluded that, if prices fall significantly, there could be 15,000 suborbital space tourists annually by the end of this decade, and while the technical timelines have slipped and slipped again, the demand is hardly likely to have done: there are plenty more millionaires and billionaires now than there were when the survey was conducted.

In the 49 years since Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight, 512 people from 38 countries have been to space. The first operational suborbital craft could easily beat that record all on its own. Now there is just the little matter of proving it's technically possible.

Quote - Ian Sample

"Over the next two decades, this global industry is set to double in size to over £400bn in value," Ian Sample Science Correspondent.

"For the first time, we will have a body with a firm grip on the future," said the science minister, Lord Drayson. "Britain's space industry has defied the recession. It can grow to £40bn a year and create 100,000 jobs in 20 years. The government's commitments on space will help the sector go from strength to strength."

The British space industry contributes £6.5bn to the economy annually and is growing at 9% a year. The continued success of the industry, which focuses on building satellites and associated electrical equipment, has marked it out as one sector that could help Britain recover from the financial crisis.

David Willetts - BBC

The new science minister David Willetts says space is an important growth sector for the UK economy and he intends to do all he can to support it.

"I believe in the space industry," he told BBC News. "Britain has a comparative advantage and we will carry on backing space."

Mr Willetts was speaking after chairing the UK Space Leadership Council, which advises government on space matters.

The group includes interests across industry, academia and government.

He said the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition would pick up where the previous government had left off and would put "energy into the programme".

UK space had witnessed some key developments just prior to the General Election. These included the establishment of an executive space agency, and the production of a major report that set out a strategy to grow the British space industry over the next 20 years, creating 100,000 jobs in the process.

Mr Willetts acknowledged that the election process had paused the momentum, but he told the Council that he was ready to push forward again.

He paid tribute to his predecessor, the Labour science minister Lord Drayson, for his efforts on space, and said the coalition had no intention of tearing up good work just for the sake of it.

Mr Willetts reaffirmed his desire to make the space agency a truly executive body with control over policy and funding that hitherto has been spread across government departments and science research bodies.

"The agency is at the moment essentially a shell and it needs a proper single funding pot," he told BBC News.

"It wasn't possible for Lord Drayson to resolve that issue before the election, and with all these public expenditure issues hanging over us it's going to take a while; but I'm committed to trying to achieve that, to get as much money as possible aggregated into the single funding pot for the space agency."

Funding has always been a thorny issue in UK space matters.

British governments have traditionally had a lower civil spend than their major European space partners - Germany, France and Italy - and with the current tight fiscal environment, this is unlikely to change in the near term.

But Andy Green, who led the Space Innovation and Growth Team that set out the 20-year strategy, said a lot of what was required of government did not involve spending money.

"We all recognise the difficulty of the situation we are in, but we've also made the point obviously that where the government does decide to intervene financially and otherwise, the emphasis should be on growing sectors," the chief executive of Logica told BBC News.

"He seemed to have a genuine passion for space as an opportunity to grow employment and wealth in this country. In the first instance, that's what we were looking for - enthusiasm."

Mr Willetts promised to tackle regulation issues, such as the access to spectrum that enabled companies to develop new satellite services.

He highlighted the role satellites could play in climate monitoring, and in providing universal access to broadband internet. And he said he wanted to see the UK take part in the emerging global space tourism business.

This is currently being led by a British company - the Virgin Group - but the firm will be operating first out of the US, and it will need legislative assistance before it can work from home shores.

"I personally would love to see Virgin Galactic being launched from the UK," Mr Willetts said.

"There are a lot of challenges in making that happen, but I think it would be a great pity if we missed out and I want to try to make it happen."

Finally, on the issue of space science, the minister said he would be talking to the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to see how its "controversies" in recent years could be resolved.

The STFC has structural problems and has been hit particularly hard by the recent fall in the pound, which makes its subscriptions to major European "science clubs", like the European Space Agency, relatively expensive.

David Willetts is the Conservative Minister for Universities and Skills. He reports to Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade.

• Britain currently has a 6% share of the global space market
• The sector contributes some £6bn to the UK economy annually
• It has grown by an average of 9% per year (1999-2007)
• The industry supports up to 70,000 jobs, about 19,000 directly
• A pre-election strategy report saw further major growth opportunities

Japan

Space Elevator: Most of a rocket’s fuel is spent blasting through Earth’s thick atmosphere and out of the planetâ€s strong gravitational field. But here’s an alternate strategy for getting payloads up to space: Construct a 62,000-mile-long cable jutting straight out from the equator, hold it in place with centripetal force, then lift satellites and spacecraft out of the atmosphere with a giant freight elevator. One major hang-up: Cable strong enough to support the system does not yet exist, though it could be made from carbon nanotubes. Shown above is “The Climber” which sill carry the payload.

One of the most promising technologies for the aspiring outer-space commuter is the space elevator. The concept, like quite a few others, was pressed into the public imagination by Arthur C. Clarke, who in his 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise described a incredibly thin, incredibly strong carbon filament with one end anchored on Earth and the other extending up to a satellite in geostationary orbit. Now, a group of Japanese scientists are convinced that they can build a space elevator more quickly and cheaply than has been believed possible.

Such a cable could convey cargo into space very cheaply and easily. Carriages would travel up and down the cable under modest power, not the vast expenditures of energy that are currently needed to send anything into orbit.

Technology has crept closer to making it a reality: we have geostationary satellites, and carbon nanotubes promise to be strong and light enough to form the filament, if they can be produced in sufficient quantity. A space elevator would be tens of thousands of miles long.

A few initiatives already exist to make a space elevator a reality. Elevator:2010 sponsors annual contests; LiftPort promises to have an elevator built by October 27, 2031, and is selling tickets on it, at $25/ounce.

The Japan Space Elevator Association, a new player in the field anticipates that Japan’s industrial and research power — “using the technology employed in our bullet trains,” according to Association director Yoshio Aoki — will be able to surmount the outstanding obstacles. The carbon fiber, which needs to have 180 times the tensile strength of steel, is currently under development by Japanese textile companies. The total price tag estimated for erecting the elevator is being estimated at just a trillion yen, or about 10 billion dollars.

Read more: http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/japans-space-elevator/#ixzz0zzTir5k8

Repair

sketching out a CNT defect repair procedure « on: April 05, 2007, 08:53:03 PM »

---

Every 4 microns or so, a CNT sidewall defect exists. If some of these defects could be "fixed", an SE ribbon material will surely be around the corner.

The key is to make the repair process cheap. This rules out mechanical repair (using an SPM for instance) over Liftport's calender. To detect the defect co-ordinates, the easiest method I can think of is to have a spun CNT thread zoom by an automated Electron Microscope capable of telling little hexagons and pentagons apart.
Defects change the electrical properties of a CNT so it would be even easier to send electricity through the CNT, provided someone can figure out how to integrate arbitrary sections of an intact CNT into a circuit.

Once detected, hit the defect with an appropriately energetic photon. I don't know the energy required to turn a pentagon and heptagon on a CNT surface into two hexagons (maybe between 2eV-8eV), or if photons can even be fired to hit an Angstrom-sized target. But every other non-mechanical healing method I can think of targets non-defect sites as well, and so *I think* creates more new defect sites than healed.
The photon has to hit the defect site and not hexagons, else *I think* new defect sites would be created. This would require "CNT feed" tolerances sub-Angstrom; that is, the timing between E-beam scan and photon emission (IDK if it is easier to run the beams by the CNT or vice-versa) must be short enough to avoid "losing" the defect co-ordinate. I don't think you can digitally store the defect sites and heal them later. I think the CNT will naturally twist and "slip" whatever Electron Beam co-ordinate mapping system exists.
I'm envisioning an E-Beam Microscope and a very closely attached "hula hoop" of tuned lasers. The CNT spun first through the Microscope and than the ring of lasers.

There are few scientific papers directly about CNT defect repair (two I count) but it doesn't take too much widening of the field to be inundated with CNT papers. Over the months ahead I'll try to sift through (free pre-print) papers that might be relavent to the defect healing methodology described above and post them here or on the ribbon thread. Or I'll revise my little CNT repair factory.