Re: Colony Survival Free Download
Tanesha Prately
In other words, the colony is, uh, surviving. The waves of zombies that come at night grow for every new bondsman tilling your fields or baking loaves, but the horde is always manageable. The tower defence infrastructure for Goitreville involved nothing more than the two guardsmen who were placed there on the first day. Later, I added a third, not because the zombies were becoming a problem, just because I had the resources and there was nothing else to do. The only other threat here is starvation and we are hundreds of berries away from that and, as long as I don't recruit a dozen people in a single sweating flash of hubris, we always will be.
The theme and the BGM really works well together. Any particular reason for choosing Unreal for gamedev?
No offense just curious, because it is low poly so i thought Unity can cover it.
Would love to hear your feedback, and thanks in advance!
loved EVERYTHING i saw, except the helicopter xD, but i take it thats a standin for something else? since its got a whole medieval vibe going on, imme ring this bell so i get updates, keep up the great work and hope to see a little demo of (i saw waves so i take it its sort of a colony sim defense?) the first 5 waves or something?
Numerous hazards threaten honeybee populations (Apis mellifera) worldwide. Many publications that looked into colony losses from any part of the world reported that several biological and environmental factors acting alone or in combination have the potential to cause premature colony mortality (Genersch et al. 2010; Potts et al. 2010; Spleen et al. 2013). In the USA and Canada, alarming losses of honeybee colonies were recently reported (Steinhauer et al. 2014). In Europe, the decrease in honeybee colonies was estimated at 16 % between 1985 and 2005 and the reduction of beekeepers at 31 % (Potts et al. 2010). However, these figures on the decline in the number of managed honeybee colonies in Europe are mainly influenced by socioeconomic factors (Vanengelsdorp and Meixner 2010; Aizen and Harder 2009) and must not be confused with colony losses (meaning the death of honeybee colonies) over winter or during the season (McMenamin and Genersch 2015). At the European level, the COLOSS initiative (= Prevention of honeybee COlony LOSSes) had already allowed to document colony losses in Europe on a broad population (19 countries returning data from 15,850 beekeepers with 279,523 colonies in 2012). COLOSS has collated data throughout the distribution of a standardized questionnaire filled and sent back by the beekeepers (van der Zee et al. 2014). Following a study on honeybee health surveillance systems financed by EFSA, the need to implement standardized representative systems on bee health has been highlighted (Hendrikx et al. 2010). Hence, to complete the approach, an extended epidemiological project has been set up at the European level to assess honeybee colony mortality on a representative sample of beekeepers and colonies.
In 2011, the European Commission has requested the technical assistance of the European Reference Laboratory for honeybee health (EU RL) to set up and run for 2 years a field study on honeybee colony mortality. Seventeen Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU), Belgium, Denmark, England and Wales (treated here as one member state), Estonia, Finland, Germany, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden, were gathered in a consortium to set up the first pan-European active epidemiological surveillance program on honeybee colony mortality (EPILOBEE) based on randomly selected apiaries and colonies (Commission 2011; Commission 2012). Member States participating to EPILOBEE covered 80 % of the colonies declared in the EU according to a survey run by the EU RL (Chauzat et al. 2013). The objective of EPILOBEE was to quantify the mortality of honeybee colonies in each MS on a harmonized basis and to estimate the health of the bee population through the assessment of clinical disease prevalence and other information related to beekeeping practices (the honeybee subspecies, the training of the beekeeper or the size of the operation corresponding to the total number of the colonies owned by one beekeeper, and the size of the apiary, for instance).
In the present study, we investigated the statistical links between the colony mortality and some risk indicators including clinical disease prevalence (varroosis, AFB, EFB, chronic bee paralysis, nosemosis), beekeeper age, sanitary measures, and beekeeping characteristics (migratory beekeeping, size of the apiary, size of the operation) using the apiary as the epidemiological unit. Two types of mortality were addressed: the winter mortality and the seasonal mortality.
The EPILOBEE surveillance was designed to collect data on a representative sample of apiaries and colonies within each MS by the means of onsite investigations. Representativeness has been reached through a random sampling of apiaries in the entire MS. In four MSs (France, Finland, Poland, and Sweden), the protocol was implemented in some regions representative of the MS. In France, Finland, and Poland, six, five, and one administrative units, respectively (NUTSFootnote 1 3 and NUTS 2, respectively), were chosen to be representative of the diversity of the landscape and the beekeeping productions. In Sweden, three regions (NUTS 3) were located in southern part of the countries where the beekeeping activity was well developed, thanks to mild climatic conditions. The sampling was based on a two-stage random sampling with apiaries as primary units and bee colonies as the secondary units (Table I). In each MS, beekeepers and apiaries were randomly selected from a national list as complete as possible (refer to guidelines (EURL 2011)). Within each apiary, the appropriate number of colonies was randomly selected in order to be representative of the apiary. This number was calculated using a sample size calculator indicating the number of colonies to be visited in an apiary according to the size of the apiary and to the prevalence targeted (EURL 2011). In 2011, the European Commission (EC) issued a call for all MSs to participate to EPILOBEE (Commission 2011). MSs should send their application to the EC in due time (not all the 27 MSs did send an application). Subsequent to the evaluation, 17 MSs out of 20 that submitted their proposal were selected to take part to the program. The epidemiological proposals were assessed according to a standard methodology based on the evaluation of several criteria to evaluate the compliance with the core protocol and/or the proposed alternatives: the setup of a preliminary census or the assessment of the total honeybee population, the geographical representativeness of the survey, the representativeness of the epidemiological units selected (apiaries selection method and the availability of a sampling database), the colony sampling mode within selected apiaries, the precision of the measure at national level (sample size), the inclusion of diseases in the clinical examinations and the systematic biological examination, the compliance with the visit protocol and proposal, the organization of the data management, the availability of sufficient human resources planned to work in the survey, the training planning, and the organization of the animation and the project follow-up and coordination.
To follow the work fulfilled in each MS, the MSs were requested to produce a technical documentin 2013 and 2014 to report the field work implemented during the epidemiological project. The numbers of controlled apiaries declared by the MS in the document were cross-checked with the data stored in the online database. When the agreement between the numbers was above 90 %, the figures were accepted as they were meaningful for the statistical analysis. The data were therefore epidemiologically valid. In some cases, minor discrepancies have been noticed between the number of expected apiaries to be visited initially proposed in the MS programs and the actual apiaries visited (Table I). These discrepancies were in all cases justified (e.g., losses of colonies, beekeepers refusing to take part to the surveillance) and did not undermine the final results of the studies. It should be noted that the representativeness of the data depended on the method of selection of the apiaries and colonies (random selection) and not on the number of inspected apiaries and colonies.
There were some minor adjustments on the selection of beekeepers in some MSs. The registration in the list used for the beekeepers random selection was mandatory in most of the MSs (Table I). Professional beekeepers were more frequently registered in national data sets than small beekeepers, as they were subject to official controls related to honey trade (Regulation (EC) 852/2004). This might overrepresent large operations. On the contrary, beekeeper associations may underrepresent such larger operations. In Estonia, Latvia, and Slovakia, the random sampling of beekeepers was risk oriented (colonies were not entirely randomly selected, see Table I). In Germany, the random selection of beekeepers was completed with beekeepers taking part in the German bee monitoring project (Genersch et al. 2010). In Spain, Greece, and Italy, the random apiary selection was performed subsequent to geographical stratification. In Finland, France, and Sweden, the apiary sampling rate was different according to areas (Table I).
In 2013, the EU RL made a short survey through a questionnaire sent to all MSs taking part in EPILOBEE, to investigate the reasons why some randomly selected beekeepers refused to take part in the program. The following reasons were given starting by the most frequent: the number of honeybees (300) sampled at V1 for the systematic samples could impair colony survival; the person contacted was not a beekeeper anymore; concerns on diagnosis of notifiable disease in the apiary; and lack of time; afraid of the control, of the bad weather, or to weaken the colonies with the visits. In case of refusal, most of the MSs performed a new random selection of beekeepers.