Not sure I could live without Twitter any more

If I ever needed reminding that the world of social media has introduced so many new opportunities to communicate and collaborate (and I don't need reminding) and make connections that never used to be possible, then monday was it. 

Three things happened. 

First, it was nice to wake up to a nice tweet from Dragonfli, who are the suppliers of our beepol lodge and beepol bumblebee colonies. They were very complimentary of the modifications I'd made to their lodge and tweeted that out to their followers, which has driven some extra visitors to our bumblebee project information - which obviously makes me happy. 

That's an amazing customised Beepol Lodge Nik!! Love the idea of temperature display as well!

Great to get such a ringing endorsement from the manufacturer. You never know, maybe they'll make the temperature display a standard feature? ☺

Next, I was contacted by the Richard at waspinator - this was a result of a couple of tweets in a combined conversation with Martha Kearney (radio 4 presenter) who keeps honey bees. She appeared on Simon Mayo's radio show in an interesting segment on beekeeping, and after when I checked her tweet stream I noticed she'd been in contact with waspinator due to some lack of success with the product at keeping wasps from hives.

I added to this thread, as we too had tried the waspinator but not managed to keep wasps from raiding our bumeblebee nest for precious honey at the end of the season, and Richard got in touch. Following some discussion with him, he gave some advice and offered to send us half-a-dozen waspinators to trial around the garden - to basically create a "ring of defence" around our bumblebee hive.

This is great news, as not only can we hopefully keep the wasps at bay this year, but we can also trial the waspinator in a bumblebee-inhabited environment and provide this data to the company and generally improve the understanding of how to use the product with bumblebee colonies.

Finally, I was honoured to be selected by The Tiffen Company to provide the cover photo for their facebook page. Tiffen is the leading movie and photographic effects accessory company and I use their software extensively as part of my workflow. The desktop software mimics their vast range of photographic filters and accessories and I love being able to take an "analogue" approach in the digital domain. This is the picture they chose:

A big thanks to Tiffen! 

So, all in all, busy day with my new found social media contacts. Not sure I could live without twitter anymore!