We created the World's first tweeting bumblebees, and went on to win the Internet of Things Award (Environmental) 2012! Thank you to our readers for your votes!
Introduction
Our Bumblebee nesting project started in 2011 as a bit of conservation to help the declining bumblebee population by encouraging one (or more) to nest in boxes in our garden. We discovered it's not easy, and our project quickly evolved into an ongoing and intimate study of these amazing creatures, which we are sharing here for the benefit of all.
Amongst our unexpected successes are:
A short clip in the film "Britain in a Day" by Ridley Scott (Broadcast by the BBC in 2012)
Featured in Wired Magazine for creating the World's first tweeting bumblebees
Winner of the Internet of Things award 2012 - Environmental Category
Oldest recorded age we can find of a worker Bufftailed Bumblebee - at 103 days
We've discovered, observed and collected a sizeable amount of real-world data, still being analysed and written up (Overview here). Additionally,
We've sourced several live colonies from commercial providers and have been looking after numerous disabled bees indoors.
We've learnt to recognise individual bees, spot specific/individual behaviour patterns
We measured efficiency and can predict some of their behaviour triggers.
You can also follow BeeBoxALula on twitter where our bumblebees tweet live for themselves!
Insights
We're also using tech to monitor the lives of our bumblebees - visual, audio, temperature, sunlight, weather. We can see how the environment impacts their behaviour and understand, capture and share the marvels of their secret lives.
As a species under great threat, we've brought the critical study of Bumblebees into the Multimedia age and revealed intriguing and new insights based on direct observation.
I'm thrilled to report that our bumblebees were voted by readers as the winner for the 2012 Internet of Things award in the Environmental category! This is a great end to a busy year with the bumblebees, where I installed a lot more technology to monitor their behaviours and environment.
It turned out that for the main colony (as widely reported) it was actually a pretty disastrous year. Foraging proved difficult with so much rain and we had a brood of about 20 early queens in April that all left the nest - none were produced over the summer.
One surviving queen did seem to have an attempt to build a second colony, but it was doomed as no workers emerged and her honey supplies were robbed by other bumblebees.
So, 2012 proved to be quite a different year to 2011, with no colony activity beyond August (November in 2011) - but with the added delights of a short spot in the BBC's Britain in a Day film and the IOT award to round things off!
We're indebted to Hans at ioBridge for a great mention in a podcast by himself and his co-founder (Jason) over on "IT Conversations".
The discussion is about the "Internet of Things", it's relevance and evolution, and how ioBridge has contributed to that (particularly with some unique Intellectual Property).
ioBridge is the core technology we use to interface our bumblebee nest to the Internet and it has worked impeccably (and easily) since the day we installed it. Hans has been a great advocate for our project, which is arguably another "novel use" for their technology and a demonstration of not just connecting "things" to the internet, but connecting "Nature".
Our discussion is around 18 mins into the podcast.
We've got some more great technology to come too, so watch this space.
For the first time, our bumblebees generated their own tweet this morning as a result of increased activity following the prolonged cold and rainy spells.
Our bumblebees' first ever tweet
To my knowledge, this is the first tweet ever generated by bumblebees themselves. Sadly they are not equipped with a bee-size keyboard, so instead the tweet comes courtesy of an activity monitor via the entrance flap to their nest. The flap itself is there for protection against invasion by Wax Moth and the bumblebees have learnt to operate it in order to leave the nest to forage.
The Bumblbees are busy and have started tweeting
While the tweeting is fun, there is a serious point to having an "internet enabled" bumblebee nest, as we are collecting data about the environment/micro-climate and the bumblebee activity "outside of the laboratory". Though bumblebees have been studied for well over 100 years, some of this research takes place in the lab; a criticism that is often levelled, for example, on studies of the effect of pesticides on pollinators.
Our project, therefore, is demonstrating a proof of concept for the type of technology that can be used to study bumblebee behaviour in wild environments. We hope to build on the data we collected in 2011 which was able to determine the factors that trigger bumblebees to start and stop working at the beginning and end of the day.
I made some further progress today in getting our beepol lodge "internet enabled" - to get temperature, light and activity data automatically logged and available online.
More details are on the technology page, but I'm using an ioBridge board to capture the data and push it to their web platform, whenceforth all manner of wonderful things can be done with it.
I've been setting it up over the last week - getting to grips with the way the sensors would and the way data is recorded. I've pretty much got to grips with the basics, as well as some of the features that are possible such as twitter notifications.
The rain and wind and low temperatures continue to make getting in the garden to do jobs a very cold and messy (muddy) affair - notwithstanding, I did some of the setup in the garage, which included drilling through the wall for the wires and getting the network up and running.
getting the iobridge powered up and running in the garage - sensors routed through the wallI mounted a weatherproof box on the outside of the garage. This will contain an ambient light sensor, and some status LEDs (for example, a sunset/sunrise indicator) and a warning buzzer (e.g. for nest "over temperature")
outdoor iobridge sensorsThe white cables are the two temperature sensors - one for inside the nest, the other for the ambient temperature.
This is the kind of output we're getting at the moment. Once it's been running a few days, I'll set up some rules (such as triggers on temperatures).
iobridge dashboard of bumblebee sensorsYou can see I've set up a "flap input". This is not installed yet, but the plan is to put a small switch on the wax-moth flap (made from aluminium foil) and count the amount of "flap" activity, which will give an indication of how many bumblebees are coming and going into the nest. Just need a dry, warmer day to get that done.
We've always had a strong technology angle on our project - if nothing else, it has made the whole thing far more enjoyable by allowing us such intimate observation in the lives of these amazing creatures. But actually, more than that, it has allowed us some fascinating observations and data collection that sheds (some possibly new) light on their normally private and underground existence.
A lot is known about bumblebees, but that doesn't mean everything is - and particularly as the climate and macro and micro environments change, so too bumblebees are surely affected. So, we feel that observing, collecting data and reporting our findings is also an important part of our project - and the technology is a big part in that.
There's a fun side to it too - From the outset I've wanted an internet connected bumblebee nest (see Internet of Things), so that we can remotely monitor data, but also do fun things, like have the bumblebees send tweets. This kind of technology, while seemingly frivolous, is actually an important part of our future, in terms of environmental understanding and monitoring. It's the kind of technology that is monitoring habitats, storms, oceans, tidal waves, severe weather and so on. Someone has to explore the "art of the possible" so that we can understand and predict our planet better.
For our first year I dabbled a bit with some "interconnectedness" - got a few tweets coming out of the CCTV system when it detected movements, but it really was dabbling round the edges. I was also comtemplating a new system called "Twine" which provides temperature and movement detection in a small plastic "soap bar" that can connect to the internet. But it's expensive.
For this year, however, I'm excited to discover iobridge. This clever little modular system connects to your network and internet and a whole range of different types of sensors. You can easily configure its operation and rules through the iobridge website and cloud service, as well as get the system integrated with other webservices, and of course twitter :-)
iobridge - creating the "internet of things"I plan to document what I'm doing with this on my technology page rather than within the blog, so it's all in one place.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of possibilities with a connected bumblebee nest, for example:
warnings of temperature too high / too low
measuring activity levels and correlating with weather and light
measuring light levels and entrance / exit behaviour
counting bumblebees in and out
The beauty is, all this data can be published on an online dashboard, viewed on the iPhone/iPad and also integrated with other services, as well as sending alerts and messages via email and twitter etc. There really is huge scope to monitor and collect some great data, and completely automate the process. I can even embed some of the realtime data in other websites, such as this blog.
I've been making good progress so far getting it configured. For example, I have an LED which is green before sunset and red after sunset (so we know when the bumbles should be in), a small alarm that goes off if the temperature gets above 30C (and tweets some warnings in advance), and I'm currently working on counting the breaks in a light beam so we can start to count the bumbles coming and going.
