Bum Fandango

Since the death of BLB we made a few adjustments to the nest environment for Holly, who survives him. 

One of the key things was to start putting honey-water inside the nestbox as she rarely seemed to be coming out to drink. In fact she seemed to have reverted to "nesting behaviour" - i.e. staying inside the nestbox, guarding it, fixing it and patrolling it whenever there was a disruption. We started to think she had adopted this as a "role" and was thus destined not to come out of the box. Therefore, just as in a real nest, we would have to provide supplies for her inside the nest. 

This worked well - we provided a few droplets of honey water each day and they would be disappearing and we could hear her being active. We couldn't see her much when the lid was on the box because she spent a lot of time in an area of bad video coverage and also under the moss - but we could hear her scratching around. 

However, as time went by I was a little concerned that she was becoming more dormant - spending most of the time resting (sleeping?) under the most and not doing anything. If we disrupted her nest she would come to the entrance, perhaps outside by a few centimetres for about 15 seconds - but basically was more or less "hibernating" under her favourite patch of moss in the nest.

We thought maybe some extra heat would encourage activity as it seemed to have a postive effect when she and BLB were in the smaller icecream tub. So, we discarded the normal wooden lid of the nest box and built a cardboard one with a hole in it. Over this hole I mounted the infra red light I had bought to boost the night vision in the garden (but never yet used). This light packs some serious punch - designed to light a 20 metre square area. 

The light is doing a wonderful job of heating the box - underneath it is getting to about 30 degrees - at the far end about 25 degrees. This is perfect for Holly as bumblebees keep their nest at 30 degrees. And we can tell she loves it. First of all she spends most of her time under the light, every once in a while doing the "bum fandango" (as BCW calls it) and twirling round on the spot. 

We also decided to add pollen to the box. Although this is used to feed larvae in the nest (a source of protein), there is a role for the nest-dwelling bees to make this happen, and they make "pollen bread" for this purpose by mixing pollen and honey. We haven't been disappointed - Holly has shown great interest in the pollen (even though she didn't when it was in the original ice cream tub). We can't quite tell what she's doing with it, but on occasions it looks like she is pushing little pollen balls around and possible making them or breaking them up. Tonight we saw her standing in the pollen, drinking honey-water, then heading into the pollen to scratch around.

She also spends a lot of time scratching at the floor (as shown in the videos). We don't really know what this behaviour is - it seems really pointless, but then I wondered if this is what she would be doing if she was helping new bees to be born - trying to scratch/break them out of the waxy pots. 

The thing is, we are using "bee logic" to figure out what to do and to make sense of what we see. We make the assumption that Holly will behave most naturally as if she is in a nest if she believes she is really in a colonised nest. And so making her environment as nest-like as possible means getting the temperature right, the contents right, the food source right and so on. I truly think we are now managing to get those parameters as close as we can realistically expect to (in a nest that is inhabited by one bee). Consequently she is carrying out the type of behaviours she would do in a real nest, even though she doesn't realise how fruitless they are.

What I'd love to do is add some "robot" bees to the nest, to see how she interacts with them :-)

7: the lucky Clingons' number

Yesterday was another one of those days where it was showery and blustery without good warning.

The lavender is now proving such an attraction that it is swarming with bees for most of the day, and they actually seem reluctant to leave it.

So much so, that when the rain comes, they keep on foraging. We are regularly seeing the bees continue to work even while raining and sometimes quite heavily. The Common Carder bees are  the most dedicated: they will continue flying in almost anything, meanwhile their cousins begin to cling to the underside of the lavender and (especially when windy) hang on for dear life. (We've never yet seen a Carder do this: they always seem to manage to keep on going or head off home).

Yesterday the showers came and those unlucky "clingons" (6 buff-tailed and one red-tailed) had to hang on for hours.

By 8.45pm they were looking decidely miserable, their colourful bands dull, flattened and matted, and their wings so soaked that flight was impossible. They lock their grip round the lavender in the bee-equivalent of a bear hug and just hold out for as long as it takes.

We found seven and took them in a large plastic storage box to the garage where we could heat and dry them with the infra-red patio heater.

Within a few minutes the first few were twitching, then cleaning, then doing the "bum dance" (they stick their behind in the air and straighten their legs and clean their head, legs and thorax), shimmying as they do so. This is usually the sign they are about to take off soon. Sure enough, off they went, taking off in slow-motion VTOL-style.

The remainder were more bedraggled and it was a longer process. They don't really like letting go of the lavender either, even when they are warming up and drying out - it seems like an instinct for them to cling on until they are almost ready to fly. Interestingly, they each in turn made their way to the bits of gaffer tape we had stuck some paper towel down with. We checked and discovered that the temperature of the tape was greater than that of the paper towel - they do like their warmth, these bees, especially after a drenching! So, we have now also found the perfect surface for warming up chilly bees!

It was getting late - about 9.30  (official sunset was a 9.20) and we were concerned that the light levels were no longer conducive to a safe flight home. We had one tiny little redtailed bumble still remaining in the box, quite unkeen to leave. So, we filled an old jelly pot with artificial nesting material and moss and placed her on top of it, then placed it in the secure tub on top of our beehive shelter. Within moments she had buried herself so deep into the pot that we couldn't see her - obviously choosing a safe, warm dry bed for the night over a precarious flight home.

We were pleased to see that this morning she had gone - quite possibly staight back to the nearby lavender where the redtails are in abundance.

Seven rescued in one go, that's a record so far!

Rainy Rescue

It was looking stormy this evening and although a storm never materialised, about half an hour before sunset it suddenly went chilly and tipped it down. The lavender, as usual, had been full of bees, so we had a quick check to see if any of the more daring (or perhaps less attentive) bees had been caught unawares. Indeed this was the case - both a small redtail and a bufftailed bumblebee were clinging to the lavender, scared to move. 

One by one we cut the lavender and added them to a plastic tub and then took them to the back garden to heat them up. Here's a video of us heating the redtail: 

In the case of the bufftail, we brought her indoors as it was absolutely chucking it down by then, and we left her inside to warm up first with a lid on the tub. We waited till the rain past and checked it was still light enough outside (we still had some of our own braver bees leaving the nest, even though it was sunrise). We followed the same procedure with the hair drier and it worked a treat. 

We might have buried one bumblebee tonight, but it's great we could help another two on their way!

It's a boy!

A bit of 'closure' and some happy stories tonight. 

Final Goodbyes

We finally buried BLB under some of our Lavender - it seemed a fitting end for him and he'll continue to be part of the bee community in his own small way. We took photos of him today so that we could finally try and identify his gender - and finally we could confirm that he was a boy.

Amongst other things, one way to tell is from the segments on the antennae - from the joint to the front tip boys have 10 segments and girls have 9. Yet another amazing fact of nature that would've have ordinarily have gone unnoticed to this casual observer! Here's a close-up of his antenna (it also shows the long tongue and sheath):

Male Bumblebee Antennae

He created a lot of laughter for us while we had him, not mention a lot of curiousity about his behaviour. RIP BLB! 

Goodbye BLB

We found BLB ("Big Little Bee"), our second disabled bee, crawling on the lawn on 28th May. He breathed his last in our care on 7th June, just 11 days later. He was probably somewhere between and 11 and 14 days old. A very short innings.

Though we wonder about the care we provided, the reality is, there is nothing more we could do than provide, warmth, safety, honey, water and some fresh flowers and we surely extended his life beyond that of limping round the lawn as imminent prey. 

He seemed to expire over the course of about 18 hours - the first obvious sign being fairly motionless, flat on his back. Although he eventually righted himself, wandered around his box, and eventually spent the night under his pine cone, this was a sign of sad things to come.

It was a surprisingly sad moment when BCW let me know the news today - perhaps because we had been able to give the gift of extended life to such a small fragile life form; perhaps because of the joy and laughter he caused us through his mad bumblings and inexplicable behaviour. Perhaps just because he Was.

Anyway, I was moved to poetry:

Goodbye our dear "Big Little Bee", 

gone so soon and so sadly.

 

In youth, so bright,  so energetic,

in truth, so bumbly, so chaotic.

 

You loved to dance and dive and preen,

though destined not to find your queen.

 

A pine cone was your choice for rest,

beside a sumptious five-star nest.

 

You overcame one-sided odds,

lame and bent before the Gods.

 

Big little Bee you brought such joy

to the weary days of this small boy.

 

Alas, you never could fulfil your role,

but BLB, you filled this soul.