Evicting bees from houses

Every year, the Apicultural Branch receives a number of inquiries from harassed householders concerning methods of evicting bee colonies which have taken up their abode in houses. Cavity walls often provide cosy quarters for swarms seeking accommodation, while others establish themselves in chimneys, ventilators and under floors. [One of an ongoing series of articles, collectively titled: Bees and Honey

Bees in box hives

The keeping of bees in other than properly appointed hives with standard frames is illegal in Western Australia as such hives make it almost impossible to inspect the swarms in order to check for disease. Nevertheless, beekeepers occasionally encounter swarms which have established themselves or have been established in fruit cases or other types of boxes or containers. [One of an ongoing series of articles, collectively titled: Bees and Honey

Effect on bees of insecticides used on rape

Rapeseed could provide beekeepers in Western Australia with a valuable new honey crop—hut insecticidal spraying of rape at flowering time is a potentially serious threat to most commercial beekeepers. There are indications that insect pollination may improve rapeseed yields, so both growers and beekeepers could gain from a co-operative approach to the problem. Spraying after sundown and preventing spray drift to nearby apiaries should avoid most losses

Evicting bees from houses

EACH year the Apicultural Branch receives several inquiries from harassed householders about how to get rid of bee colonies which have nested in houses. Cavity walls often provide cosy quarters for swarms seeking: a home, while others establish themselves in chimneys, ventilators and under floors

Developing a Pedagogical Framework for Designing a Multisensory Serious Gaming Environment

The importance of multisensory interaction for learning has increased with improved understanding of children’s sensory development, and a flourishing interest in embodied cognition. The potential to foster new forms of multisensory interaction through various sensor, mobile and haptic technologies is promising in providing new ways for young children to engage with key mathematical concepts. However, designing effective learning environments for real world classrooms is challenging, and requires a pedagogically, rather than technologically, driven approach to design. This paper describes initial work underpinning the development of a pedagogical framework, intended to inform the design of a multisensory serious gaming environment. It identifies the theoretical basis of the framework, illustrates how this informs teaching strategies, and outlines key technology research driven perspectives and considerations important for informing design. An initial table mapping mathematical concepts to design, a framework of considerations for design, and a process model of how the framework will continue to be developed across the design process are provided

Map or Gantt? Which Diagram Helps Viewers Best in Spatio-Temporal Data Exploration Tasks?

In this paper we investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of two two-dimensional static visual representations of spatio-temporal data, a map-based and a Gantt-based diagram, in their support of various information retrieval tasks. The map-based diagram is characterized by a natural spatial arrangement of locations on a schematic map. The Gantt-based one represents time naturally as a linearly ordered set of time intervals from left to right. A within-subject empirical experiment has been conducted, in which participants were asked to verify queries about persons, locations, and time intervals. The formulation of the queries was based on (i) Bertin’s three reading levels, (ii) certain cognitive operations, and (iii) different syntactic orders of expressions denoting persons, locations and times. Response correctness and response time were recorded. With respect to response accuracy, both diagrams support viewers well in nearly all information retrieval tasks. Regarding efficiency, the map-based diagram elicited significantly faster response times than the Gantt-based one, except for queries with time in focus. The results suggest that map-based diagrams require less search and reasoning effort of viewers to retrieve the information asked for in the task types used in this study.</p