Down but not out...

It's been a busy few days with more bees coming into care. There on the grass was a stranded bumble - still - silent. 

It looked liked it was a bufftail or vestal cuckoo and on closer inspection it had both wings - but the right one was damaged - sort of "folded". 

found on the lawn - damaged wing.Of course, it couldn't fly. Actually, I say of course, but this is not necessarily a given. There are reports that bumbles can fly with as much as 50% of the wings missing. But that's "edge damage" as opposed to "structural damage" which what we have here. Little bee can't, for example, join the front and rear wings together with her special "hooks", owing the bend. And that's another thing, we're not 100% sure she's a girl or a boy.

The ice cream tub was summoned and duly mossed and honey-watered. And for a while it was looking good, even though when she tried to take off she managed only a slightly sustained hop. Not being entirely sure of her constitution and origin we decided on an overnight quaratine before contemplating addition to the main indoor nest, occupied by Holly. 

We were glad about this decision. The next day came and little bee was less well. Slow, lethargic and by mid morning unmoving, keeled over, with all the memories of the untimely death of BLB. We took her indoors to wait the long 24 hours that we felt we needed to be sure. 

Thank goodness we did - the next day some signs of life. A little twitching; antennae probing; sufficient energy to drag herself away from the heat of the laptop, though not to consume any drink. In the end BCW accidentally spilled some honey water on the kitchen towel and finally little bee quenched her thirst. With new energy, she heaved herself onto the moss and bedded down for the night, while we moved the tub over Holly's infrared lamp. This maintained a temperature somewhere safe around 24 degrees. 

After another night, she still had life signs, though barely impercetible. Perhaps if she was humanoid she'd be four score and twenty; creaking at the joints; wheezing and failing. Still, she dragged herself around the tub a little. She's a brave fighter. And we, the helpless spectators. 

The morning was further punctuated by the finding of another invalid by BCW. Racing across the grass, with only one wing to show for it. BCW came to the rescue and before you could buzz, this biggerLittleBumble was in a care ward of its own too. Same protocol: isolation and quarantine to begin with, for the safey of all concerned. Now, biggerLittleBumble is more energetic, but again is doomed never to fly. All that energy has to be worked off somehow - racing round the box is one way; perhaps he's a boy. Boys do that kind of thing. Well, BLB did for sure, and he was a boy.

So, in total we have taken 4 bees into care. BLB passed away soon after and it seems that littleBee might do so soon. But we still have Holly (who is doing amazingly well, almost miraculously so) and biggerLittleBumble. The big question is, can they live together harmoniously? 

Fight for survival

We thought it was about time to pay a visit to the field over the road where we had spent so long trying to catch queens and where our own brood of bees is now feasting on broad-bean pollen. We thought there might have been a couple of nests there too which we wanted to check out for activity. We couldn't see anything at the supposed nest locations - we might have been unlucky with our timing - or maybe the colonies didn't survive.

Nor could we see much activity in the broad bean field - we were hoping to see some of our own bees. So, it was all seeming a bit fruitless... 

That was until we starting walking along the ditch where I had been catching queen bees earlier in the season. I coudn't believe how many queen bees we were seeing, working their way along the moss and poking their noses into it. The only explanation for this was that they were Cuckoo bees looking for nests to infiltrate, as all regular queens will have nested by now.

Sure enough, we checked a few of them out and they were cuckoo bees (Bufftail and Redtail). We saw a few workers too (bufftail & carder) mooching about near the moss and hoped to be led to a nest somewhere, but it was not to be; most of them shot off without us being able to follow them.

The other striking thing was how massive the queens looked! The cuckoo bees seems to be a bit longer than average anyway, but of course we are now used to looking at our small workers and tiny wee Holly, so that has distorted our perception. Can't believe only a few weeks ago we were trying to catch these huge beasts!

As we wandered along the embankment we suddenly spotted this:

We did a bit of research afterwards and concluded it was two bees fighting each other (not mating). At least of them (the one resting at the end of the video) is a cuckoo bee (vestal cuckoo) - an imitation of a Bufftail bumble bee. We are not 100% sure about the smaller one - whether it is a queen or a worker; but they are definitely fighting. We can't know whether the cuckoo was prevented from entering a nest or forcibly ejected. 

From what we can tell it's fairly uncommon for them to fight outside of the nest (or at least be seen doing so ). Fights are reported to happen over the nest site itself between regular queens, who will in fact fight to the death; presumably this happens in the nest site itself when one tries to take over.

It's not unreasonable to think something similar would happen with cuckoo bees. Although they themselves are reported to cohabit with a host queen (as well as in some cases attempt to kill the host), they are also potentially subject to attack and fight to the death.

That's what we're seeing here...

A Day of Ditch Diving

Another busy day today preparing for the arrival of our bumble beehive later in the week. I had to construct a shelter for it so that everything is ready when it arrives. I will detail how I've tackled that in a later blog.

On the bee-catching front, it was quite en eventful day - moreso than perhaps we expected. The temperature was about 20 degrees in the sun, though quite a chilly breeze. We didn't know if this would affect what bees we saw.

We went out between 16.30 and 18.30 (with several trips to return home) and in total saw about 8 identifiable bees, as follows:

• 1 Carder Bee - may have entered a nest under some brambles
• 1 Confirmed Bufftail/Vestal Cuckoo - observed in flight, video on youtube
• 4 bufftails(BB30, BB32, BB33) - caught 3, unable to catch 4th
• 1 Redtail (BB31) - caught but wouldn't enter box, possibly a cuckoo, let go
• 1 Confirmed Redtail Cuckoo - caught, identified and let go

I was amazed to see this many bees out today; it's not as if there was a big hive of activity - in fact it seemed as though there were very few bees about. But, perserverance paid off and one by one I saw all these bees working their way up the ditch at the edge of the field as the sun began to directly shine on its embankments.

I was on fire today with my ditch-diving, catching 4 bees in total! 1 Redtail and 3 Bufftails!

We tried the redtail (BB31) in rear nestbox, but it wouldn't enter. And, to be honest, we weren't 100% sure if it was a cuckoo or not, so after 20 minutes we let it go. I wasn't too bothered by that. 

We also tried one of the bufftails (BB32) in the rear nestbox too. She took 20 minutes to enter - which is always a bad sign. We didn't see her on the camera, but we heard her in side; but then after 2 minutes she left. Again, pretty much to be expected. 

BB32 - Bufftail

The first bufftail (BB30) we caught we tried in the front nestbox. She was amazing and went straight in without any fuss at all. Frustratingly she was able to find a spot out of view of both cameras in that box! We heard a bit of scratching but not too much activity. It could be that the moss we have now put in the box is damping and reducing the sound. She spent just over an hour in the box and when she left she performed one of the most exciting behaviours we have seen to date. She crawled out and circled at a low level - this is usually thought to be getting a good view of the box and its location. She rose in height and circled a little more, then started to head off to the right. Instead of just zooming off into the distance, she came down to the lavender then flew back along its edge, back over the nest box. She hovered a little over the lavender around the nest box, then cross the road to the green just opposite, then finally headed off into the distance.

This is the first time we've had a bee "come back" after leaving the nest - i.e. show interest in the surroundings. So, it seemed pretty exciting. As usual, the big question is will she be back tomorrow? (Whilst we wonder why she didn't stay today).

Since the front box was now vacated we were able to introduce our third bufftail (BB33) to this box. She took longer to go in (15 mins) and again managed to find a spot hiding away from both cameras. (This is something I probably need to address). Again, we heard very little activity from her except the occasional buzz (maybe 3 or 4 over the space of several hours). We chose to leave the capture pot docked until dark which guaranteed her staying overnight; however, we've now removed that and replaced it with moss while she sleeps tonight.