Week 2 started in a slightly chaotic way. I was left in the morning to set up a 'practice' sucrose assay (I say 'practice' because it was meant to be, however the results obtained were actually useful to my supervisor and PHD student Anthony- I will add onto this later). This was the second time I'd performed this assay so the techniques were still fairly new to me. Unfortunately, it took me the entire morning to prepare the first set of 19 bees for testing. I then took my lunch break, feeling a little disappointed in myself, and came back feeling prepared to push through the rest of the day. I got back and the fire alarm went off, just as I began testing.

Once recovering from this startling and slightly annoying moment, the time provided whilst the alarm was being investigated was quite beneficial. My supervisor Liz took me and her 2 PHD students for a coffee. This moment came to be one of the most valuable of the week, as it was the first time I got to properly talk with them and get a sense of who they are as people, rather than just co-workers who are focussed on our own things in the lab. I also felt like I had a chance to express my feelings without being worried about getting in the way of their work (this week has also bought on a realisation that the work I'm doing is also significant, and those around me are more than happy to take a break to help with my uncertainties). 

Monday also came with a great bee-scape, as I found that an entire cage of Anthony's bees were buzzing around the incubator that we keep the cages in. I proceeded to watch from the corner whilst Liz and Anthony battled with the hundreds of bees. Who knew using a net and pair of tweezers required such skill?

After this initial manic Monday, I progressed a lot through the week: becoming more efficient at performing tasks/experiments, making many spreadsheets in Excel to analyse data for one of Liz's previous experiments, setting up my first cages to be exposed to Sulfoxaflor pesticide, furthering my understanding of the importance of the project via further reading and analysing some of my results (with Liz's assistance). These results proved to be significant and gave confirmation that the artificial brood pheromone we are using does produce the same effects as its natural form- which there was some uncertainty around as Liz and Anthony were not getting expected results for any of their reproductive experiments.  

Overall, I'm so happy with my progression this week. I have built my confidence, skills, knowledge and am feeling more used to the different energy Leeds has outside of term-time (although I am still surprised how busy campus is, I never expected Laidlaw Library to have so little seats available on a Sunday in August!?). 

(Apologies, I didn't take many photos this week so here are some bees that look like they're posing).