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 was a day of mixed fortunes in the nest today.

Everything started badly when I discovered one of our bees drowned in a small glass jar near the nest. It was part of our wasp-prevention 'system' and to date had not been an issue, but it had filled with rain water and for some reason this unfortunate bumblebee had crawled or fallen into it and was unable to escape. Worse still, it was one of our larger "stripy" bees, which was a really hard worker in the nest. One of these had indeed been unaccounted for from the night before - i.e had been seen to exit (at about 4.30pm) and not come back. So, she could have been in there for anything up to 18 hours. I cannot say how upset I was, knowing, of course, that I had unwittingly placed the jar in its position.

BCW was very nice, saying "remember all the bees you've helped survive", but I still felt terrible. She brought her indoors to quarantine in the customary ice-cream tub before we decided what to do.

On the flip side, it seems our little "baby" bee (the smallest in the colony) was, quite literally, doubling her efforts to make up for the deficit in workforce. She made over double the number of foraging trips today, 21 compared to 10 yesterday and packed her pollen baskets with astonishing levels of pollen.

Vast quantities of pollen on the tiny legs of our smallest worker

She obviously found an abundant supply somewhere, as she was not returning with mixed yellow and orange supplies, just bright pinky/orange pollen all day long. What a trooper! I decided to calculate her key stats:

number of trips: 21
mean trip time: 22.4 mins (Stdev 6mins)
mean pollen deposit time: 4.73 mins (Stdev 2.12)
total flight time: ~ 8 hours
total work time: ~ 10 hours (available daylight: 12 hrs 14)

She was basically non-stop all day from start to finish - it's truly incredible to observe.

And remember, she doesn't get paid for this! It's all because of her social instincts.

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

Social Instincts

Nik Sargent