This file describes the archived CSV files associated with the paper 

"“A comparison of three queen rearing techniques that might be appropriate for small-scale beekeepers, to improve sustainability of beekeeping in the Northeast”"

by Hannah R Whitehead, Ang Roell, Sam Comfort, Bi Kline and Lynn S. Adler


Queen_Field_Data.csv

Round: indicates queen rearing round (round 1 took place in May/June, round 2 in June/July)
Scorer: the person who assessed queen survival and worker population
Treatment: queen rearing method, H = 48 hour, D = 10 day, W = walk-away
Q_Status: indicates whether a living queen was present in the nuc at the end of the queen rearing process, 1 = queen present, 0 = no queen
Worker_Pop: a measure of worker population size in mating nucs at the end of the queen rearing process. 1 = sparse, 2 = average, 3 = nuc bubbling over with bees
WA_Group:Sam actually had 3 walk-away treatments. This tracks which walk-away treatment was applied to each WA split. 0 indicates that it was not a WA. Treatments are: 
-----A: nucs dequeened in place
-----B: splits made up and moved in from an outyard
-----C: splits confined around 48 hours and moved within the same yard
Pop_Group: entries that were analyzed for worker pop. All queen-right entries (209) EXCEPT ones where the worker pop was “?” or “NA” (2; 1 each) or HW was the scorer (1) so 206 total in this category

Queen_Lab_Data.csv (methods from Tarpy et al. 2011)

Round: indicates queen rearing round (round 1 took place in May/June, round 2 in June/July)
Treatment:queen rearing method, H = 48 hour, D = 10 day, W = walk-away
Weight:queens were anesthitized and chilled at -20C until immobile, then weighed to the nearest 0.1mg on a digital scale
Head_width: queen head width in mm measured using digital calipers
Thorax_width: queen thorax width in mm measured using digital calipers
Spermatheca_diameter: the spermatheca was removed and measured in mm using an ocular micrometer on a dissecting scope
Perc_Viability: stored sperm was stained and viewed on a fluorescent microscope - the portion of live (vs. dead) sperm was measured 
Viable_Sperm_Count: stored sperm was stained and viewed on a fluorescent microscope - the number of live sperm were counted
Tot_Sperm_Count: stored sperm was stained and viewed on a fluorescent microscope - the total number of sperm (live and dead) were counted
Spermatheca_Perc_Filled: the spermatheca diameter was used to estimate spermatheca volume. The theoretical maxium number of stored sperm was calculated by dividing the spermatheca volume by the average size of an indivual spermatozoon. Total sperm count was used to estimate % filled for each spermatheca