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.

For the first time, our bumblebees generated their own tweet this morning as a result of increased activity following the prolonged cold and rainy spells.

Our bumblebees' first ever tweet

To my knowledge, this is the first tweet ever generated by bumblebees themselves. Sadly they are not equipped with a bee-size keyboard, so instead the tweet comes courtesy of an activity monitor via the entrance flap to their nest. The flap itself is there for protection against invasion by Wax Moth and the bumblebees have learnt to operate it in order to leave the nest to forage.

The Bumblbees are busy and have started tweeting

While the tweeting is fun, there is a serious point to having an "internet enabled" bumblebee nest, as we are collecting data about the environment/micro-climate and the bumblebee activity "outside of the laboratory". Though bumblebees have been studied for well over 100 years, some of this research takes place in the lab; a criticism that is often levelled, for example, on studies of the effect of pesticides on pollinators.

Our project, therefore, is demonstrating a proof of concept for the type of technology that can be used to study bumblebee behaviour in wild environments. We hope to build on the data we collected in 2011 which was able to determine the factors that trigger bumblebees to start and stop working at the beginning and end of the day.

[For more details: technology blog entries and technology setup]

screenshot of live data monitoring from our bumblebee nest

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

The World's 1st Bumblebee Tweet?

Nik Sargent