Interfering with Nature

Yet another day of intrigue in our beepol hive.

Late the night before we had a quick check inside the nest, our first look in about 3 weeks. 

quick snapshot inside the beepol nest

There wasn't a single murmur from the nest as we quickly opened it to provide some honey water and take a photo. Everything was intact, if anything the bedding was a little more fluffy and 'aerated'. All the bees were obviously tucked well down and bedded in at the bottom of the nest: there was no sound or movement from them. 

The biggest sense of relief was that there was no evidence of intrusion, such as wax moth. I did see a small moth in the box the other evening, but I don't think it was a wax moth (too small). 

The day began with a slow start - even our "stop out" bee that has been coming in a 6.30am (sunrise) didn't show up till 8.50am, the latest we've seen. Down here in the south east we are experiencing an obnormally warm end to September which I think is really confusing the colony - the light levels and daylight hours do not match the temperature. 

Intervention

Once again, by late morning we saw Big Mamma making an appearance. She is slow and lethargic and bus-like! We can't figure out if she's old and tired or has put on too much weight for a winter hibernation; but she struggles to move around. We inserted a small piece of cardboard through the lid/base gap in the lodge to act as a shelf for her to stand on to reach the entrance. 

The bees quickly learned to navigate the new shelf and although Big Mamma can drag herself up onto it, she has still not made it to the entrance; and indeed, has not really tried, which seems a bit surprising. What she does seem to do is go for the crack of light where the lid meets the base. It's very optimistic if she thinks she can fit through there!

We are at a loss how to deal with this - it's agonising to see her struggling to leave, but where do you draw the line at interfering with nature? There are several issues:

• We don't really know what she's trying to do, it could be to go and die, it could be to go and hibernate - so we don't know the best way to help her
• If she does exit the nest, she might not be able to fly, which could leave her in trouble - helping her out might be a bad thing
• Even if she does want to hibernate and we put her in our hibernation box, there's no guarantee it's anything like what she wants/needs - in which case she might be be unable to go and find a suitable site for herself. 
• The pure practicalities of getting her (and only her) safely out of the nest without damage to her or any of the rest of the colony (and of course not getting stung!)

So, for now, we are sitting back with great interest, a certain amount of trepidation and watching events unfold. 

For those wondering why we would want to even intervene, here is the logic:

The whole reason for getting and protecting the colony is to conserve the bumbles and give a small extra boost to their population. Because they are essentially annual, it's the queen who carries the "Olympic baton" in terms of surviving the winter (having mated) and emerging in spring to lay her new offspring. All the current workers and drones die. So, continuation of the life cycle is about the Queen being able to hibernate and survive the winter. It would be such a tragedy if, after all this work (on the queen's part) she was unable to fulfil that role, for something as simple as, say, not being able to get out of her nest. By not being able to do so, she would have "broken the chain" and denied the future another colony and new queens to carry the baton next year.

The whole situation is compounded by not knowing which queen she is - i.e. is she the colony's original queen, born summer 2010, hibernated and set up this colony spring 2011. If that's true, then actually she's destined to die soon (and that could be why she wants to leave). She's done her work and created new queens to carry that baton. They've gone and are probably now beginning their hibernation phase.

OR: is she the product of that original queen - a new queen born August 2011, destined to hibernate this winter and begin her brooding cycle in spring 2012. This is what we actually think, for two key reasons:

1. We saw an old queen leave and die back in August when we installed the nest - she was the only one there for a short while, before we then saw about 5 new ones. 
2. This queen has been brooding a new colony: the new hatchlings we've seen emerging almost every day for the last week.  She's not really meant to have been doing that, but it is a phenomena known to happen with Bombus Terrestris. With the extended warm weather, instead of going straight off to hibernate and lay next spring, she started laying now. The original mother queen, tired and old, would not do that. 

 So, this is the source of the uncertainty and our desire, if possible, to help her see it through the winter. 

Still Growing

The colony is still growing - the crackling and squeaking sounds we've been hearing we're starting to attribute to new birth; there is a distincy correlation. We'd been hearing that in short bursts each of the last few days. Usually the day after it's heard there's evidence of a new addition to the nest. Their behaviour pattern is quite noticeable - they crawl round the nest following a "search" pattern. I.e. they do not directly head from A to B, but explore: twisting and turning and feeling their way. Usually they head towards the exit several times, drawn by the light, but they do not leave. They turn round, come back inside and repeat. 

Eventually they pluck up the courage to properly explore the exit - where we have set up a "porch" and trapdoor system. They can explore round this in safety and this time they are but millimetres from the wide open world. They will do this about once or twice before building the confidence to exit. Standing on the ledge, they turn to face the nest and launch, arcing left and right, up and down to commit the view of the nest to memory. It's wonderful to watch and is the sure marker of a bumblebee making its first outdoor flight.

Sometimes they come back in after a few seconds - satisfied their wings work and that the weather is not really enticing enough. The rest of the time, they fly up and over the wall - their maiden voyage., brimming with apparent confidence and certainty.

Once such baby bee did so today. My hunch from the day said I thought she existed and sure enough, here she was. She's the same size as the baby bee (1) that's already working like crazy. (Note: the moniker baby refers to their size, not maturity; they will both always be referred to as baby). She took off at 12:35 and returned three minutes later - a nice short flight to get her wings. 

But that was it! Now she was a fully fledged member of the team - and she spent the rest of the day, along with original baby bee, bringing back basket-loads of bright orangey pollen. For this reason counting became a little tricky, as two two babies are very hard to distinguish on the CCTV.

Both babies were out of the nest in the late afternoon when I saw yet another similar sized one inside - it seems like there has been yet more hatching. I wait with interest to see when she emerges. 

More confusion

We continue to see new behaviour patterns that we can't explain. One of these has been the bee that stays out every night, doesn't seem to bring pollen back to the nest, but comes back for honey water from the entrance and every so often goes right into the nest and spends a few minutes in there. We don't know if this is boy behaviour or, perhaps, a worker who is not very effective (e.g. malformed pollen baskets). If we could tell she was collecting pollen then we'd assume she's just not very good at it and is using more energy than most for very little return; but it's proved extraordinarily hard to tell if she is carrying any (which suggests she isn't).

The other mad theory that occured to us: is she feeding another nest?

Further confusion arose when saw (what we think was) this same bee actually turn up with full pollen baskets, spend five minutes in the nest, then leave again with full pollen!

coming in with pollenGoing back out again with the pollen

But, if we though this has been a crazy day, it was nothing of what was about to come.. 



She's leaving home

It's been another eventful day in several ways.

Firstly, we were able to confirm that the drowned bee we rescued, which then 8 hours later showed miraculous signs of life, pulling herself to her feet and moving for 20 minutes, didn't make it. We tried to warm her up and get her dry and even offered some honey water. But she was unable to get to it, with her tongue trapped under her body and not enough strength the raise her head. She's been completely still now for 24 hours. 

Back in the nest, the day started quietly, in terms of activity. Our "stop out" bee, which normally comes back at 6.30 in the morning didn't show up till 8.35 - that immediately signalled something different about the way the day was starting. Indeed it seemed colder, despite (or indeed because of) the clear blue skies and bright sun. 

A lot of scraping and scratching sound was coming from inside the nest, as well as some high pitch squeaks. I'm starting to equate this with the emergence of new bees. Not necessarily hatching, but drying out and preparing to leave the nest for the first time; a process that can take a few days. 

Just after 9am big mamma bee came up on top of the bedding and rested right in front of the infra red camera, no doubt to keep warm; she stayed there till 10:45. There was very little activity during this time, just one or two mid-size bumbles taking a few foraging trips.

As we headed towards midday, the activity levels increased. The little baby bee in the nest, who worked so hard yesterday, started her trips at exactly midday, remaining unseen until then. Her exit from the nest allowed us to confirm the existence of a new tiny bee in the nest. I'd had a hunch about this yesterday and the 'squeaking' earlier in the morning I think might have been attributable to her. The final proof of her "newness" would be to see her leave the nest for the first time.

Prisoner in her own home

During this time, big mamma was appearing regularly on camera. It became apparent she was trying to leave the nest. She was absolutely huge, larger than what we remember and she struggled to climb toward the nest exit, falling back under her own weight time after time - it wasn't good to watch. Then, of course, we realised she'd be fattening herself up now in readiness for hibernation and that would explain her increase in weight - clearly her strength no longer matched her weight. Consequently she spent a lot of time scratching at the join of the lid and base of the lodge - and I realised this accounted for a good deal of the scratching sound we'd been hearing. 

She never made it out of the nest all day, despite hours of trying, but it was very obvious to see she wanted to exit. Sad though it seems, for it surely signals the end of brooding and stability in the nest, it is of course Nature's intended course. Indeed, we are surprised (if not a little worried) that she's stayed in the nest this long, as time is running short for her to find somewhere to hibernate. (Although we could probably keep the nest at a good temperature for her to survive the winter in, it would not be a hygenic environment: full of dead bees and unhealthy interest from other insects.) She may also have been missing her supplies - it was the drowned bee that had had the responsibility for bringing honey-water into the nest. We were baffled as to why such quantities were involved for such a small colony, but of course it's obvious now - Big Mamma was building up for winter.

Big Mamma trying to leave, but unable to find the strength to climb to the exit 

Much as we'd love her to stay, it was agonizing to see her "trapped" in the nest, so our plan tomorrow is to insert a small piece of card into the lodge that will provide a step to the exit - that should allow her to leave. Our only hope is that she is fit and well and will find somewhere to hibernate and is not leaving to go and die. She does seem to look as healthy (as much as we can tell from the CCTV). 

First Flight

At 13:19 our newest member of the colony tenatively climbed to the entrance. She turned and launched backwards as all new borns seem programmed to do. She was in flight! She circled close to the entrance and kept close to the nest, memorising everything she could see, gradually rising in height and wider arcs. We could see her easily on all 3 main cameras (1 newly positioned) but BCW was able to see her through the patio window - a tiny black speck against the sky. The in moments she was off up the street, the same way all the others go. Amazing and beautiful. 

She came back at 13:32 (without pollen) a trip time of 13 minutes - just enough for a first flight.

Overall activity

As per yesterday, I decided to collect some activity stats today, here are the main ones:

• Total number of trips: 47
• Trips by "baby bee": 13 (down from 21 yesterday)
• updated average trip time for baby bee: 22 mins (stdev 6.67)
• updated average pollen turnaround time for baby bee: 4.7 mins (stdev 2.27)

Activity levels were very clearly down and Baby Bee was pretty much responsible for all the pollen collection. Our newest "baby" addition didn't make any more trips after he inaugural flight. 

Most of the other trips are by a mid-size bee that never seems to collect pollen. In fact it takes honey water from the entrance every few minutes, but flies back out of the nest; Then every 30 minutes or so comes into the nest proper for a minute or two, then leaves, and repeats the whole cycle. So, it spends most of its time outdoors, just coming and taking honey from the entrance. This is the same bee that chooses to stay out of the nest every night. We have no real explanation for this behaviour - but our theory is, it's a boy and he's just having the easy life, and is probably not too welcome in the nest. Though we're at a loss to explain why he goes into it at all every half hour or so!

Tonight we are going to look into the nest for the first time in 3 weeks. We feel that disturbing it at this stage will not adversely affect the natural course of events, as we fully expect our Queen to leave tomorrow with a bit of help and the natural decline of the colony will set in. In a way it's a sad final chapter - but boy, it's been some journey getting here! 

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

..it's off to work we go.

Our small brood of bees, somewhere around 6 in number, is still working hard to keep their nest supplied despite entering the last 10 days of September. A more detailed analysis of the activity today showed about 58 trips from the nest over the course of about 12 hours, mainly by 3 bees, with a little help from a fourth.

As the number of bees under consideration goes up it becomes quite hard to tell one from the other, especially when reviewing CCTV at fast-forward speed. I have to rely mainly on judging the size of each one as well as any distinctive markings and, interestingly, behaviour patterns. We've noticed that each bee has its own behaviour characteristics, whether it's the way it walks, the way it takes off, the way it enters the nest, the roles it takes, the places it heads for etc. By piecing all this together I can generally figure out which one I'm looking at. 

It is, of course, greatly helped when several of them appear on screen at once, as in the video below. This acts a bit like a kind of system reset, calibrating my judgement of absolute and relative sizes. I included this clip below, because not only is it fairly rare, but I thought it was fun to see all three heading off to work together and then returning, bulging with pollen! And it helps to judge those relative sizes.  

In the clip is the largest worker, a medium worker and the smallest worker in the nest. Perfect calibration! 

Among them was the cutest of them all, little tiny bee, who we saw in the nest for the first time last week and finally yesterday we saw her take her first flight and perform her nest memorisation. She actually did a wee 10-second test flight just beforehand too. 

After that, there was no stopping her and she has been one of the busiest contributors to the nest pollen supply. She is coming back with bright orange and pale yellow pollen - often together, striped in her pollen baskets. So, it looks like she has found herself two handy locations to keep visiting. It could be that our sunflower patch is one of them. 

She's very small in comparison to Big Mamma - the largest and most secretive bee in our nest. She is the queen and she might still be laying. She rarely makes an appearance, but in this clip she showed up at the same time as baby bee, so we can very clearly see the vast difference in sizes:

Little baby bee is brimming with confidence: she leaves without hesitation and always returns with bulging pollen baskets, clearly not afraid to go out hunting hard for the ever scarcening pollen. She hasn't been put off by the wind either; and when she returns, she's straight onto the ramp, under the door and into the nest without a flinch. Mind you, she's so small, she doesn't even touch the entrance flap as she whizzes underneath. She is surely testament to the hard working nature of girl bumblebees!

Big Mamma & her gang

Well, another week has flown by and our bees have been busy flying too. There's no doubt now that we have at least 6, if not 8 bumbles in the colony.

The number is never static or definitive because obviously there is birth and death occuring, as well as the fact that some bees will stay out overnight (see picture), and any males will be leaving the nest to mate. So, at times it can be tricky to be 100% sure how many are colonising the nest at any one time, but what I can do is come up with some numbers based on those I can distinctly identify by sight and also tracking how many are in and out at any one time. 

A cheeky bee that stopped out all night, sloping in at 6.30am!

It's this latter metric that gives my current estimated count; at one point this morning there had been 6 exits from the nest without a corresponding return, which means there are a minimum of 6 bees on active duty. However, at the same time I had two on undetermined status - I had seen two leave the night before, with no corresponding return in the meantime.

Bear in mind, it doesn't matter about matching each bee with its own exit and return, it's just a case of counting 1-in-1-out and seeing how the numbers tally. If three leave and two return, it doesn't matter which ones they are, or what order, it means that there is still one out. That's the basis of my counting. 

So, I had two unaccounted for away from the nest and then another six on top of that. It's at this stage you start to go slightly bonkers and wonder whether you have miscounted or whether the tech has missed recording some of the activity, because it all seems a bit incredulous when you have no idea whether a queen has been laying and how much (or whether) hatching is going on!!

Anyway - that's 6 - 8 bees actually on active outdoor duty, but we can still add to that...

Who's the boss here?

This week I've had 3 additional glimpses of "big mamma" as I affectionately call her.

A rare glimpse of big mamma - she easily spans the two horizontals

She hasn't been out of the nest, so she is not counted in the above numbers. She is the biggest bee in the nest and her description fits one of the five or so big bees we saw before our holiday while we were still lifting the nest lid at night. Our gut feeling is she is a queen and is responsible for the brood that has been developing. This is fitting with the following facts: 

1. we did see these big bees collecting pollen a few weeks ago, which is what they would do before their brood is underway
2. she's now in hiding - she doesn't leave the nest and barely comes into view - just occasionally having walked across the camera zone
3. not forgetting we've had some hatching, so we must have had a queen and she must have laid something, even if she has stopped doing so

It's possible that the three sightings of "big mamma" relate to more than one big bee, as it's not possible to prove they are identical from the CCTV footage. However, this seems unlikely from a behavioural point of view, as although bumblebees are eu-social, they do also fight over owning the brood, so it's hard to imagine several queens co-existing harmoniously. Although, of course, we did directly observe them co-habiting for a short while a month ago before we went on holiday. 

A rather large and long bumble at the entrance - could this be a queen?

Crunch time

The other thing we observed yesterday was the strange crunching/crackling sound that has troubled me in the past. It lasted about 15 minutes and through the CCTV system it sounds rather like a kind of crunching or munching sound. It's the volume that surprises me, and every time I hear it I dread that it's the sound of wax moth larvae destroying the nest, chewing their way through the wax. Our last check inside the nest was two weeks ago and at that time there was no evidence of such an infestation, so I am hopeful this is still the case (despite having seen a tiny moth in the nest yesterday, but not - I think - a wax moth). 

It was shortly after this burst of sound, which was accompanied by a reasonable degree of buzzing, that we caught a glimpse of big mamma. 

My revised hunch is that this is the sound of hatching - of a baby bumblebee, known as a callow - breaking free from its wax pot, helped by its co-workers. I would love to see this in action to confirm this, and just to see it anyway, so I'll be giving some consideration for how to achieve this next year. 

This ties up with another part of my hunch, which is that there may be another new callow in the nest. What I've seen is a small bee darting about the place for a while, exploring as if learning the layout of the nest. It moves quickly with apparent curiousity and goes to the entrance, explores, but doesn't leave. Having seen this a few times, I think it's the behaviour of a new-born as it orientates itself and prepares for its launch into the big wide world. In the meantime it is able to stay in the nest, supplied with food by its sisters and helping with any remaining brood and various nest duties. Indeed, the smaller bees are thought to generally adopt this as their role.

So, I'll be on the lookout for this small one, particularly if it leaves, in which case we'll hope to spot it memorising the nest on its first flight. 

Census

Here's a rundown of the current occupants we know about:

• Big Mamma - the largest in the nest, rarely seen
• "Stripy bee" - there have been two of these, fairly large, with unusual tail markings; one was a nest fixer, the other collected pollen - we haven't seen much of the nest fixer lately, so may not be around any more
• Mid-size - there are at least two midsize bees on duty
• Small - there is at least one small bee on duty; it's quite hesistant about coming back into the nest when it returns - it always seems to fly up then leave for 15 - 120 seconds before actually coming in. Don't understand why!
• tiny - there was a tiny bee we saw last week, the first confirmation we had of new births. We've seen her occasionally, but not sure really what she's up to if still around

These numbers don't add up to my earlier total, so there must be some lookalikes in there I haven't accounted for.

Oddly there is no real apparent "nest fixing" or patrolling going on now, although on of the "stripy bees" continues to stick its bum out of the door to check the temperature in the morning!

sticking the tail out as a thermometer

Times are tough

It's also proving hard work for the team to collect pollen, though they are very busy trying. During the warm sun the activity levels have been quite high, almost to the level when we first got the nest with the original (though small) colony. But the pollen is in short supply, with them often returning with a small amount, and never the bulging pollen baskets that we saw during the summer. In some cases they return only for a sip of the honey water in the entrance, and go straight back out again. Trip times can now be anything from 10 minutes to an hour or two.

Thankfully they are still finding something (orange and light yellow) and we have actally tried putting out some artificial flowers with a bit of pollen on to see if they will try visiting them. We don't really expect it to work and so far it hasn't!

Each day brings a new surprise and it is fascinating to see our colony fighting for survival, a colony that has emerged against all the odds and proved just how remarkable our little Bombus friends are.

There's no doubt about it, a hat tip is due to Big Mamma.