Hot under the Thorax

Today I started the process of systematically reviewing our CCTV footage to note down the "first exit" and "last arrival" times of our bumblebees. This is something I am curious to plot - I don't expect to find anything particularly astounding but I'm interested to plot the graph and see if it follows a pattern, such as sunlight times. Or whether there is some other pattern that can be identified. I ended up not getting the job finished, partly because I also started review the footage from when we first installed the DVR and also the camera into the hive. Actually, it was kinda funny - when viewing the footage from when we put the camera into the nestbox, it's like something from Blair Witch project! It's dark and jerky, lots of shots of the ground, flashes of faces, every once in a while you see the stanley knife I used to cut the box, and then you see flashes of my infra-red face while wearing marigolds! 

Early Bumble

It was very windy today, so while out in the garden I saw an Early Bumblebee on the Lavender hanging on for dear life! It was clinging with all its might, legs wrapped fully round the flower trying to stay hanging on. This gave me a chance to try some macro photos of it, although the wind was a nightmare and most of the pictures were pretty blurred. Of course, I could have upped the ISO setting on the camera to use a faster shutter speed, but that creates more noise which is undesirable; and actually didn't solve the biggest problem which was trying to track the focus. Anyway, I still got some reasonable pics:

 Early Bumble Bee - Bombus Pratorum - Male (see the moustache!)Early bumble bee - bombus pratorum

It turns out we are seeing male Early bumbles. We can tell they are males because:

• they are not collecting pollen (they don't, they just feed for themselves)
• they have a moustache
• they have 13 segments on their antenna, not 12 like the females

 At one point one of these males flew onto BCW's bright purple jumper, so I got a great photo of it there:

 Early Bumblebee (Male - Bombus Pratorum)

It's a amazing how bright and fluffy they are! They are very unmistakable!

Cold Bufftail

Shortly after we spotting a Bufftail landing on the grass - we weren't sure if it was one of ours or not, but we suspected at first it was just struggling to fly in the gusty wind and was bedding down in the grass for a few moments. Again, I took the opportunity to get some close up photos, although this little bee was more inclined to give me her warning leg.

Bufftail Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) resting and warming in the grass - also with some grey (Broad Bean) pollen in her basketswarning leg from BufftailEventually we figured that perhaps she was too cold to fly and could do with some help to warm up as we didn't know if she was one of ours (in which case we could have just transported her to our nest box). So I got the garden patio heater out and started to heat the area where she had landed. Within about a minute she buzzed and did some short flights of a few inches, so we knew she was warming up. The ground around her by this time was climbing, and ranging between about 30 degrees and 50 degrees. Within another 30 seconds she was all warmed up and off! She flew over the fence, so we don't know whether she was one of ours or not - either way, it was great to get her on her way!

Own Private Hotspot

It's always a delight to discover or see something new with our Bumbles and barely a day goes by when this is not the case. 

Today did not disappoint, with little Holly being bright and colourful and quite busy. Some of her activity was spurred by her new discovery of the "hot spot" in her tub. This a warm area at one side of the tub near to where we have a laptop. The fan vent on the laptop is heating the box to about about 30 - 33 degrees.

The laptop is a new addition, connected to a webcam we added to her tub a few days ago. This allows us to see her more easily from inside the box without looking through the translucent sides and without disturbing her by taking the lid off. We parked the laptop up close to the tub and found that the exhaust fan was heating it up.

Yesterday BCW noticed that Holly had discovered this hotspot and at certain times of day was resting in it, pressed up against the side of the tub to get the heat. Today I saw this for myself - she would come up to the side of the tub and press her legs against the side so that she could get her belly towards the  heat. At other times, she would simply just lie with her belly flat on the tub floor. We measured the temperature (on the outside of the box) at about 33 degrees - just nice and toasty for her. 

 Holly pressing herself up against the inside of the warm tub!

She has the freedom to choose anywhere in the box to sit - the other end of the box was about 21 degrees, so it's clear she is choosing this spot of her own accord. We also moved the PC to a different place on the tub between the two days and holly also re-located to the same position. Proof, if any were needed, that she loves her new hotspot!

Into the Light

below is a short video compilation of a few clips from recent CCTV that caught our attention - it contains the following clips:

• A bee that climbs out of the nest onto the box and then falls off! No idea what was happening there!
• A bee flying out of the box into the morning sun - I just like the way it's backlit against the sun
• Two bees leaving the box on after the other, turning round then taking off in reverse

I was rather bemused by the two bees that came out of the box and took off in reverse, wondering why on earth they would do that. And especially why two would do it in succession. Then of course it dawned on me (almost literally) - it was just at the time the sun was shining directly onto the front of the box, so I surmise they are avoiding the glare of flying directly into the sun and are instead launching in reverse. 

Is this a known behaviour?

Turns out it's a "Tree"

It was a beautiful day today, so we spent some time in the garden working on the laptops near to our pots. We had lots of bees getting busy on the Lavender and Hebe. We saw some very small bees with bright yellow stripes and a reddy coloured bottom. 

We checked the identification guide and they turned out to be the Early Bumblebee (Bombus Pratorum) - the first we have seen! We saw some too with the missing mid-band, just as described in the guide. 

Early Bumblebee (Bombus Pratorum) - Female Worker with missing band on Hebe

We also came to the conclusion the other smaller bees we had been seeing the with ginger "lifejackets" (as BCW calls them) were actually more likely the Tree Bumblebee (Bombus Hypnorum) rather than the Common Carder we thought they were (Bombus Pascuorum). The difference is mainly in the abdomen - the Carder has more of a ginger covering, whereas the Tree Bumblebee has a black abdomen. We'll try to get some photos over the next few days in order to confirm for definite.

The Tree Bumblebee is a recent addition to this country, so it's lovely to see them in our garden enjoying the plants so much!

Mind your head!

We've now got to the point where our CCTV DVR system has been tweaked with all the motion detection and camera angles that we can fairly quickly run through our footage and look for interesting activity. Over the next few postings I'll post a few of the videos we have found that have caught our attention.

Today's is just a funny little clip. BCW actually spotted this as it happened - a bee flew in and instead of flying into the entrance, just flew straight into the box and fell the ground! It then seemed to buzz off into the nearby lavender to recover! The clip below is in slow motion so you can see what happens more easily. 

It's not actually the only instance - we've seen this happen at least one other time. We don't really have an explanation other than a last minute brake failure!