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.

Finally back from holiday and catching up on updates. I've been a bit "light" on updates recently anyway as the first part of May was almost as miserable as April, and there's been such little activity in our colony we've just been leaving them to get on with it. (Partly I have been sidetracked by the technical elements of the project too ☺).

Anyway, finally this weekend I at least got chance to do a quick traverse along my favourite transect and see what bumbling was happening out there in the wild.

Not much - is the answer - but not nothing either. I've been a little baffled that there are so few bumblebees about in general; really not seeing much of any shape and size, though the flowers have been late coming, many only starting to bloom now (our lavender and "love in the mist" finally broke out this week).

I did see, however, quite a few queens; mainly redtails (4 or 5) but also 2 bufftails. One was cruising along the ditch at a height of about 1.5 metres just minding her own business. Another was burrowing into moss (see video). She wasn't the only one showing nest-searching behaviour - most of the redtails were too seemingly "nest searching too". Here's a video of the "moss-burrowing" - I welcome explanations, since there is no obvious nest hole they are clearing out!

This all seems a bit odd - by the start of May last year pretty much all the Queens were safely alreadu building their nests - but of course the weather has been atrocious and it seems this may have delayed the successful search and establishment of nests. The other compounding factor is what may have happened with "early queens". Our own colony produced about 20 new queens in April - which have all left the nest - so what are they up to now? Perhaps they are just biding their time outdoors, waiting to mate when males appear. (I still need to review the CCTV and figure out when they actually started leaving the nest permanently).

I also saw an unusual bumblebee - black with whitish stripes - almost getting into a fight with some other identified buzzing animal. I think it may have been a cuckoo bee of some sort (e.g. Barbut's). I'll post the video later.

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

What's up with the Queens?

Nik Sargent