Sad News

Very sad news this morning upon checking our nestbox - QB2012-02, our bufftailed queen, appears to have died overnight :-(

We are both gutted, because obviously our intervention is at least in part or wholly responsible, and it represents the antithesis of everything we want to do for the bees.

We will apply our usual 48 hour quarantine and provide food and warmth to be sure, as we have seen miraculous recoveries in the past - but I am not hopeful.

It is important that we learn and share the lessons as part of our research. On the face of it there was no reason for this to happen. Although this queen was captive under a (large) cloche we know they can survive in captivity given the fact that not only can they exist in greenhouses, but from the direct experience we had of the many we tended last year indoors. She had all the food (both plants and additional supplies such as sugar water and pollen) and water that she would have needed. There was warmth, shelter and safety. So, it's something of a mystery.

However, her behaviour was muted and, on top of the evidence we collected last year, I am yet further convinced that a "mood change" might be the culprit - i.e. an awareness of being captive and a corresponding lack of interest in foraging and feeding, and an increase in stress levels. Sadly we do not have the facilities to conduct measurements such as hormone levels - the best we can do is closely observe behaviour.

Capturing queens is not our prime objective this year as we will source a reared colony regardless. But, we are keen to continue researching the factors that help to encourage queens to nest and survive and thrive in gardens. We are comparing several strategies this year, and use of the cloche system is a new one.

Our mistake was to hope the Queen would still find the entrance to the nestbox, even though she had not done so for several days. The fact she didn't find it is not down to its prominence or ease of access, but simply that she stopped looking. This is a clear change in behaviour as a result of being captive.

If we continue to study this technique, the minimum change we will have to make is to release the queens after 24 hours regardless. But we are reviewing the whole technique.

I cannot express my sorrow at this truly unintended but terrible outcome, as we are painfully aware the planet will almost certainly be one more bumblebee colony short this year. I hope Mother Nature will be forgiving.

We want unkempt grass!

It turned out to be an interesting day, busier than expected as far as the bumblebees were concerned. Aside from a small update in pictures (below) we also met the head of Parks and Open spaces from our local council, and I also had contact from another leading bumbler (actually a co-founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust) with exciting nest box information. So let me deal with them in turn:

Parks and Open Spaces

Thanks are due to BCW for setting up a meeting with the head of Parks and Open Spaces for East Cambridgeshire Council, who came to visit us today. We discussed ideas and possibities for changing the way (and frequency) that grass is cut in our neighbourhood and the planting of wild meadow flowers in some locations. It was a good meeting and he was very friendly and ameniable, though with any such ideas one has to be cogniscent of the objections from other residents (such as "I pay my council tax to have the grass cut every two weeks in a perfect shape", or "I don't want wild flowers outside my house because I don't want them spreading to my garden".) Sadly it is very hard to please everyone. 

However, there are definitely things that can be done. One simple idea is to leave uncut rings around the base of trees to encourage plants to regrow (and actually protect the trees from lawnmower/strimmer damage). These rings can be extended over time in a sort of "stealth" fashion to reduce objections. It seems where a small amount of natural wilderness has been allowed to regrow in other areas it has eventually been well received by residents, who eventually get to see the benefit. 

The Queen bees were on great form - showing up just where we needed them to as we explained where all their favourite hangouts are. ☺

A new nestbox on the market

I was thrilled to be contacted by George Pilkington of Nurturing Nature with details of a new nestbox he has designed and launched. Turns out George is a conservation consultant and founder member of the BBCT and has been interested in our blog. He told me he was really wanting to tell us about his new nestbox, but couldn't until the design was protected - but one of its key features is the ability to protect from wax moth, which is a massive step forward. I wasted no time in asking George to send us one to add to our collection and try out alongside the other simpler designs. 

He has also shared some of his ideas about how to encourage queens to choose a manmade nestbox to set up colony - some ideas we had already come to know of or devised independently, others are definitely improvements on our setup. I have made some immediate entrance tube modifications based on his suggestions (see later). Most intriguingly I am looking forward to advice on capturing queens without causing them stress, which inevitably puts them off using the box regardless. 

Updates on our Cloche captives

Out two queens under our cloche have still not ventured into the nestbox so we are considering next steps (e.g. releasing them) as we do not want them to be unduly stressed or become frail. They do have adequate food supply, but we're not convinced they're using it. They may be getting too cold overnight by not using the box. We did see them both mooching about today though and we put some springs of heather on the ground (since they weren't flying up to the tall pots) and the Early Bee immediately tucked in. 

Temperature wise the cloche is doing a great job - while it was 12 degrees in the garden is was 21C under the cloche, so this  must be working in their favour. But after their initial introduction and buzzing we haven't seen any flying activity and that bothers me. To us humans it looks like a "mood change" and we saw the same thing with our "indoor" bees (disabled) last year. And of course, we know that recent research suggests that bees can potentially experience "depression" (a change in propensity to be active, really). We will monitor this carefully. 

Our first 2 captive queensOur bufftail is beautiful though and she loves sitting on the ribbon in the corner for some reason. 

garden setup changes 

fake "flowers" to attract attentionWe've read numerous times that bumbles can be attracted to bright yellow and that it can be helpful if nest entrances are marked out like this. This is something we'd already done with our nests, but we got some of our own evidence of bees' interest in it when we saw yellow tape on our CCTV cables. I've now added tape to some canes to create a splash of colour as they fly past the garden - hopefully a little extra to tempt them in for a closer look. Never thought my high-visibility tape would be used for this. ☺

Based on George's pictures and suggestions we have also extended the entrance tubing on our nestbox, so that it is now disguised on the lawn (see the tiny yellow fleck in the picture below). We saw a very large queen nest searching over our lawn today and in fact after a few minutes caught her and introduced her to the box (without sealing it). Of course, she left fairly quickly, but it was interesting to see where in the garden she was and wasn't looking; which backs up for extending the entrance tube. 

nestbox entrance extended with a tube across to the lawn

And finally

Our pussy willow tree is starting to blossom! It's a little behind some of those on the edge of the field - but not by much. I took a close up picture of one of the catkins - you can see why the bees are going nuts for them - look at all the access to pollen!

pollen-rich catkins (pussy willow)

We're hoping that over the next few days we'll have a lot of queens showing an interest in it!

Chasing Queens

We woke up today with the sun shining brightly and the sound a loud buzzing around our window! It was a beautiful day and clearly the bumblebees were out and busy. Not so many on our heather today - though we did see a Queen Tree Bee warming up and having a drink. (See below)

tree bee warming and foraging on heatherSo, we got to work quickly to complete the set up for our main nesting box. Following our experiences last year we decided that the best strategy for keeping queens captive for a short while to encourage nesting, is not to trap them in the box itself but to provide a small "greenhouse" area with all the required plants. Thus the queen is not trapped directly in the box and has some ability to roam and forage. We are using a cheap (£11) "greenhouse cloche" from Wilkinson - it's perfect for the job. 

We mounted the box first and made sure that all the edges of the plastic cloche were well buried in the stones to prevent any escapees. 

"greehhouse" system for keeping queens captiveWe chose the back top left corner of the garden which faces south east. This is a compromise location to ensure the box doesn't get too much direct sunlight during the height of summer (since the box is not buried). 

The we added a good supply of flowers (in this case Heather). 

We also provided honey water in the box (which we can refill from the outside if necessary) and also some pea-sized pollen balls in the box to encourage nesting. If the queen shows interest, we'll replace these every day.

"greenhouse" system for keeping queens captiveWe went out about 3pm to our usual location by the nearby field and were astonished to see how many bumblebees were around. Many were zooming past our heads and we traced them down to the nearby Pussy Willow trees. 10's of bees were buzzing about the upper branches, foraging on the emerging blossom - it was an amazing sight - never seen so many queens all together. 

I wandered along the ditch at first and quickly found a queen trying to burrow down - probably to rest for the night (about 3.30pm). She was easy to catch and very placid. It was easy to get her into the cloche safely too. Here she is:

we think this is an Early Bee QueenAt first we thought she was a bufftailed queen, but I began to think she is actually and Early Bee, due to her quite strongly red tail and also her much more diminutive size. (Oh, you should see the males in the summer, they are tiny and ever so cute).  

Pussy Willow with 10s of Queen Bumblebees busy all over itAbove is the tree where so many bees were busy. You can't really see them in the picture, but it was like Heathrow airport! As the afternoon faded many of these bumbles dropped down to floor level and were searching along the fence line (where the cut grass met the natural grass and twigs) looking for somewhere to bed down. It was easy for me to capture two along this line and bring them back. 

We decided to let one of these two (both Bufftails) into the cloche. Even though it now contains two queens and they could end up fighting to the death, we feel that we can release one of them if we see that looks like it might happen. At this stage we don't know the likelihood of either of them nesting, so we could end up releasing both if they show no interest. 

Below is the bufftail we added. She was significantly larger than the Early Bee (as expected). 

bufftailed queenShe spent quite a while trying to fly to the light, but eventually gave up and decided to bed down under some of the stones; which was intriguing to see how she managed. The early bee did the same - after about a minute in the cloche she decided to bury down into a gap in the stones, sheltered by a dried leaf. If only they knew the luxurious cabin they have available at the other end of the cloche ☺

The third queen we added to our second nest box - this box hasn't got the same food supplies, so we will have to open up the entrance tomorrow, and if she leaves, so be it. 

Now we have to monitor them carefully for the next few days - we have cameras set up in all the boxes which will help us keep a close eye on things.