Month: January 2023

Source: United States Navy

Fossils of honey bees have been found dating back 150 millions years ago, however, the earliest depiction of humans collecting honey only goes back about 10,000 years ago. In addition to honey’s sweet taste, it has a variety of medicinal uses and benefits. Honey possesses antibacterial properties, meaning it can be used to fight infections. It can also be used to treat burns, fight cold symptoms, reduce stress, and aid in many other illnesses and ailments.

In the continued effort to keep a positive working relationship with the environment, Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Barking Sands, has a program to help preserve these essential pollinators. The installation’s bee program is fully maintained and operated by volunteers.

“I always try to let people know they are not my bees, I don’t own them, they’re the base’s bees,” said Kenny Thompson, a control tower operator and lead for the bee program. “Honestly, I think as a community we should be maintaining the bees the best we can.”

PMRF may not have many flowers, however, the plants that are found on the installation are all pollinated by these bees. The majority of the honey from the base’s hives comes from the pollination of kiawe. Although volunteers may be able to take home some of the fresh honey from the hives, the intention of this program is not profit, it’s preservation.

“We’re maintaining our footprint here on Kaua`i,” said Thompson. “We want to maintain a good relationship with our environment and I think having the bees on base, we’re doing that.”

There are currently four regular volunteers who go to check on the hives every two to four weeks. The first thing the beekeepers are looking for is any sort of infestation. The primary pests that pose a threat to the hives on PMRF are hive beetles and wax moths. Once any pests are taken care of, the beekeepers can focus on retrieving honey and ensuring the hives are clean and healthy for the bees.

“We’re looking for fully combed honey, but we don’t want to take all of it because that’s also the food for the bees,” said Thompson. “So there’s usually a give and take of what you want to take and what you want to leave in the hives. The process is really simple. The bees do all the work, I just come to collect the honey and clean out the hive.”

Not harvesting the honey poses no real health-threat to the hives, however it is important that the honey is harvested. If all of the honey is left in the hives, the colonies will simply outgrow the hive. When this happens, the queen will have no room to lay her eggs leading to her and around sixty-five percent of the colony leaving to find a new home.

“Last time we got four gallons of honey and it was just the three of us,” said Thompson. “That’s quite a lot of honey for just three individuals, so we jar it up and try to give it away to as many people as possible.”

The honey is jarred and given away to friends, family, coworkers, or other people in the community. Thompson’s wife works at the National Tropical Botanical Garden and will often take the honey to give away there as well. None of the honey given away is for profit.

“The biggest thing is the fact that we do have them,” said Thompson. “People need to understand that just because you don’t like bees doesn’t mean we should exterminate them, maybe we slow down a little bit and see about maybe maintaining those honey bees.”

One of the main concerns when people are considering bee keeping is getting stung. Of course when tending to the hives, the bee keepers are always wearing proper clothing to reduce the risk of getting stung, however Thompson admitted that he is occasionally stung, even through his bee suit, but that is few and far between. The likelihood of the bees stinging anyone is fairly low. As long as the bee keeper moves methodically but quickly, it is fairly unlikely that a bee will sting.

For more information about PMRF’s bee program or to become a volunteer, contact Kenny Thompson at (360) 929-0297 or email him at Kenneth.m.thompson2.ctr@us.navy.mil.

Source: United States Navy

William Harkness, a mathematics professor, inventor, hydrographer, medical doctor, astronomer, and meteorologist, was born in Scotland in 1837. Though showing interest in meteorology at a young age, Harkness turned to the medical field and received his degree from New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1862. He served as a volunteer surgeon with the Union forces in the Civil War and during the same year was appointed an aide on the staff of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Following the Civil War, Harkness was directed towards a growing issue: discrepancies of magnetic compasses under the influence of ironclad ships. Harkness experimented by mounting four compasses of varying design to an ironclad ship, traveling to various ports around the world, and directing the ship to various cardinal directions while recording magnetic declination, inclination, and horizontal force — simultaneously comparing readings with true bearing. Through thousands of observations, Harkness produced the most elaborate study on behavior of compasses within armored ships ever recorded at the time.

During his years at the U.S. Naval Observatory, Harkness developed a series of technological improvements in spectroscope and photographic equipment, which attributed to incredible detail in his observations of total solar eclipses in 1869 and 1870. Following his observations, Harkness was appointed one of the original members of the Transit of Venus Commission, important for determining the scale of the solar system.

Transit of Venus, the passage of the planet across the sun’s discs, occurs in pairs separated by eight years and more than a century in between pairs. The astronomer Edmond Halley presented evidence in 1716 that this phenomenon could provide data on the sun’s parallax, its precise distance from earth, as well as other dimensions of the solar system. With his invention of the spherometer caliper, the most accurate instrument ever devised for determining figures of pivots of astronomical instruments, Harkness provided extremely accurate results.

During his work in astronomy, Harkness is best remembered for his research on solar parallax and its related constants. He conducted a complete inquiry into all previous observations of solar parallaxes and assigned each a precise value for degree of accuracy, of which the American Nautical Almanac differs by only a small fraction of arc. Amongst his achievements at the observatory, none should forget his theory of focal curve defining the color corrections of achromatic telescopes, which is universally accepted and currently in practice.

Following his retirement, the U.S. Navy bestowed upon Harkness the honorary rank of Rear Admiral in recognition of his work and 37 loyal years of service, and two Navy vessels have since been named in his honor.

The U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command directs and oversees more than 2,500 globally-distributed military and civilian personnel who collect, process and exploit environmental information to assist Fleet and Joint Commanders in all warfare areas to make better decisions, based on assured environmental information, faster than the adversary.

Source: United States Navy

Dean Franklin Bumpus (1912-2002), an oceanographer employed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), presented an illustrious career with accomplishments ranging from marine life surveys to complex current data collection still in use today.

During his tenure at WHOI, where eventually he would reach the title of Scientist Emeritus, Bumpus completed what many consider to be the first comprehensive survey of marine life in Georges Bank, a large elevated area of the sea floor between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. With data collected during the 1939-1941 Atlantis survey, Bumpus collaborated with George Clarke to provide a three-dimensional data set for plankton, larval fish, and hydrography over two winter/spring periods. The Clark-Bumpus plankton sampler is still of value more than 60 years later to biologists working on Georges Bank within the Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) program.

Dean Bumpus’s career in oceanography wasn’t restricted solely to the civilian sector, as during World War II Dean, alongside Allyn Vine, he instructed U.S. submariners on the bathythermograph, an instrument that assisted in measuring and utilizing temperature and density gradients of sub-surface water to avoid acoustic detection by enemy vessels. During and immediately following the war, Bumpus worked with the Office of Scientific Research and Development on submarine warfare, as well as heading the Oceanographic Support office for Radiological Safety Reconnaissance as a part of Operation Crossroads in 1946, the nuclear weapon test series conducted in at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Perhaps his most notable achievement, was the culmination of years spent tracking surface and bottom currents in the western North Atlantic through use of surface drift bottles and seabed drifters. Placed in various areas along the North Atlantic currents, Bumpus relied on “return to sender” notes placed within the bottles to track final destinations. Although the exact amount of surface drifters remains unknown, 165,566 bottles were released during the 1960’s alone by ships and planes, with an additional 75,485 seabed drifters. Data collected from both instruments has provided invaluable information of surface and bottom circulation along the continental shelf of eastern North America. Drift bottles are still returned every so often to WHOI.

Long-time colleagues remember Bumpus as a generous, good-natured, and exuberant man whose characteristics brought a warm depth to WHOI. In his professional setting, Bumpus has been stated as a “WHOI hall of famer” and as “one of the real WHOI giants of the early days.”

U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command directs and oversees more than 2,500 globally-distributed military and civilian personnel who collect, process and exploit environmental information to assist Fleet and Joint Commanders in all warfare areas to make better decisions, based on assured environmental information, faster than the adversary.