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.

Today I also made a slight modification to the nestbox in the back garden to bring it up to a similar standard to the front nestbox.

The changes/modifcations were as follows:

change internal tubing
add internal remote thermometer
add small capsule of honey-water (having seen this consumed with great gusto in the front nestbox by BB33)

The tubing change consisted of:

changing to white tubing from black to allow a little more light/translucency into the box
curving the tube to send the bee into the main body of the box
creating a hole in the tube below the camera so that we can positively confirm seeing the bee enter and exit the box

The box layout now looks like this:

new layout of rear nestboxYou can see the obvious new tubing layout and in the bottom right you can see the pen-lid filled with honey water. It is just gaffer-taped to the side of the box, which has proven to be a wholly adequate technique. The thermometer sensor is in the top right of the picture and runs to an external display unit a meter away. This LCD unit is actually suitable for embedding in a device or surface, so I may come up with some further ideas on where/how to mount it, if not in the box itself (e.g. it could be embedded in the box lid.)

We got chance to test the latest incarnation of the box out when I caught a bufftail (BB34) in the afternoon.

Bb34 - Bufftail - rear nestbox

The new tubing system worked a treat and we could easily see her enter and leave the box. She went in the box for about an hour. She was quite placid with some mooching around and cleaning behaviour. Then after an hour she left of her own accord.

She didn't attempt to try the honey-water, so she obviously had other things to be getting on with!

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

Home, I'm Honey!

Nik Sargent