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.

We have some CCTV cameras pointing at the nestboxes and inside!

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.

It's been a hectic week, so this is a short consolidated queen update. It's been record-breakingly hot for March (in scotland, at least) this week, so we took timeo out to try and catch some queens and introduce them to our nest box. (The Pilkington is the default).

Here's a rundown:

Sunday, 13:45 QB2012-07 - I caught a redtail. We placed the capture tube up to the box and left it. However, we loosened the moss at the end, compared to the previous day, since the previous queen had not managed to escape herself. However, this queen never went into the box and just broke her way through the moss and escaped! We are not bothered: we would far rather they are not kept under duress.
Sunday 16:45 QB2012-08 - I caught a bufftail towards the end of the afternoon. She was much happier about going in the box and seemed to explore it quite thoroughly. Although none of the queens had really made use of the long thin tube as an exit route, we left that attached to continue trying with it. Nearly 2 hours went by as we watched and we needed to "get on with things" and we figured she was probably there for the night, so we let her be.
I watched the CCTV intently from about 6.20am the next morning and saw nothing of her. By Midday BCW intervened and checked the box and she was gone. My guess is she actually left not long after we stopped watching the night before, since (with the clock change) sunset was now 7.30pm, she would have had a decent amount of time to leave.
Wednesday 14:45 QB2012-09 - I caught a redtail searching along the (side at first, and) base of the ditch in the field. She was fairly placid in the tube (unusual for a redtail!) and went into the box quickly. Again, I switched the tubes for the long thin one, but she never used it to exit. I think it is too long and dark to be an obvious exit. After about an hour I swapped it for our short funnel, stuff with grass. She quickly spotted this from inside the box and worked her way out. She was actually quite placid about leaving - and in fact did the nearest we have seen to "memorising" on her way out, though I don't think it was. More like orienting herself I think. Anyway, I videoed it, so see what you think. ☺

(sorry for the quality in the latter half - once the bumbles are more than a few feet away they are almost impossible to track and see!)

Other Queen updates

I also saw our first Vestal Cuckoo bumblebee today - sadly couldn't get a decent enough picture.

While I was working in the garden on the laptop, I also saw a redtail queen come to our baby cherry tree, about 4 times. I managed to get some pics of her flying around it, just for fun. Her tail is super-red!

redtail queen on cherry

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

Queen Nesting updates

Other Queen updates

Nik Sargent