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.

Upsizing

Just over a week ago we found a second disabled bee - "Big Little Bee" as we are calling him. We added BLB to the same tub as Holly, but within 48 hours we soon realised this was a bit small and together they were causing chaos, going from this:

before: organised box with moss on one side and flowers nicely arranged..

to this:

moss moved shunted all over the place, flowers cast aside!pretty quickly. And although after 24 hours they were co-habiting amiably, they were still disrupting each other a lot, walking over one another while the other was sleeping, shoving each other around. Not to mention the fact they were not getting true darkness in the way they would be if nesting underground; is it really fair to expect to adhere to our human cycle?

So, we had the idea of migrating both bees to a much larger tub - large enough, in fact, to include the entire wooden nestbox that was now redundant in the front garden. The plan was also to include some real flowers/plants, e.g. lavender, so that they could get as close to a natural experience as ever. So, the design of the box was as follows:

• A layer of stone to stablise the box and provide a foundation to embed plant pots and slightly sink the nestbox to prevent the bees going underneath it
• A layer of "fake grass" over the stone to protect the bees - made from hanging basket liner. 
• real lavender
• pine cones to climb over (and as it turns out, rest under)
• some tubing to climb through and rest in
• daisys to carry honey-water (as previously)
• "flower-tower" and "flower-mountain" (also to carry honey water as previously)
• White LED lighting strip to provide additional "sunlight"
• HD USB webcam for local monitoring and remote monitoring over skype
• The original nestbox from outside, complete with 2 internal infra-red cameras

Here are some pictures of the setup:

overall tub set upview inside nestbox - cameras visibleBLB resting at the box-edgeinside the tub - honey water on daisies and "flower tower"BLB resting again!