Although I am officially half way through my project, I am still left with further data collection & analysis to do before I can come to any significant conclusions. This week was also cut short as the University was closed over Monday and Tuesday for the bank holiday, meaning I couldn't go into the lab. This meant I had to work even more efficiently the following days, and I have started to see my efforts paying off!

On Wednesday I was met with some uncertainty as my plans were skewed due to a little miscommunication with my supervisor, Liz. I had been reading and furthering my literature review that I'm writing to highlight the importance of my research. Upon messaging Liz in the afternoon for a check in, I found out I should've been doing practical work. However, the problem was easily overcome as I moved into the behavioural lab in the afternoon testing smaller sample sizes to save time. 

We then realised on Thursday that there was further miscommunication as the bees were actually the correct age to do the tests then, not on Wednesday! This didn't really matter as I was continuing with the experiment anyway to obtain a larger set of data, and to perhaps tell if bees a day older displayed a difference in behaviour or not. 

Finally, Friday was a day for me to develop my Excel skills (which are embarrassingly poor since high school Elena did not realise she should've been listening in her IT lessons, as science does actually involve a lot of computers!). Luckily Liz knows the software well and we analysed some data that she had collected, as well as the data I have received from my sucrose-response assays. Then, in the afternoon I did some dissections to provide antennae tissue for RNA sequencing, as we found the bee's had an unexpected response to the pesticide. This also provided an extra task for me, as Liz was uncertain whether we would be able to collect any more data since the weather has been so miserable (meaning the bees may have began to 'hibernate' for winter). Luckily the bees are still going, so I will be able to make more cages to continue testing on in the final weeks. 

I am very excited as I feel like things are beginning to come together, and I am starting to see results that provide some rough conclusions. It's really motivated me to keep working (even though the reality of how repetitive scientific testing can be has set in now...).  

Hopefully week-4 will come with improved communication, planning and more promising results! See you next week. :)