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.

We finally laid littleBigBee (LBB) to rest yesterday after confirming he was a boy, something we had been unable to do with 100% accuracy while he was alive. He joins BLB (BigLittleBee) under the lavender where his siblings and future generations will visit.

It's such a very short life for male bumblebees; he was probably a bit older than the 8 days we had him with us, but not much. Sadly, this is pretty much the length of time they are destined for, as their role is simply to leave the nest and mate with a new queen, and then die. Poor wee LBB never had much of a life and couldn't fulfil his role; but at least he was safe and warm and well-fed while he was here.

This is the image we were able to use to identify the sex of LBB:

close up of antenna segments used to identify genderOn the long part of the antennae it's 11 segments for a boy, 10 for a girl. We also double-checked using the hair on his legs.

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

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Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

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Nik Sargent