buzzee weekend

Lovely weather for once this weekend, so we ended up getting quite a lot done. This post is really just a video and photo update.

I took the opportunity to check the nearby field to see what queens were out and about (if any) and see if i could find any wild nests. I didn't find any nests, but I saw plenty of queens and shot some great video of a vestal cuckoo (bombus vestalis) searching for nests to invade. (see later). 

First up though, quick survey of queens seen in a 1 hour traverse along my favourite transect:

• Redtail Queens - 8 - mainly resting
• Bufftail Queens 2 - resting
• Vestal Cuckoo - 4 - nest searching
• Carder - 2
• Various others (half a dozen) in flight - unidentified

nearly all these were resting, a few flying past, and only the Cuckoos nest searching, looking for an unsuspecting established nest to take over:

One of the bufftails was more restless than most and she had no pollen - this would typically mean she hadn't set up nest (once she has, she will collect pollen to feed herself and her brood, and then ultimately not leave the nest at all). I decided to capture her and introduce her to our garden and pilkington box. Since we would not trap her in for more than a few minutes, it wouldn't matter if she had her own nest to go back to; and it could mean she would choose our box to nest in. As it happened, she took a while to enter the box and left not long later. Which is cool - if she liked the location she'll be back and if not, she's only 200 yards from where she was found and can easily get back. 

All Black

We also checked out the gardens in town and saw a few bumblebees there - another vestal cuckoo was foraging. But most interesting was spotting 3 seperate all black bumblebees forgaing and collecing pollen. I've not got a proper ID on these yet, but there are forms of all black Garden bumblebees, especially in the south/east of England (where we are). Here's a video:

New outlook

Since getting the beepol colony I've been wanting to get a camera set up in front of the lodge again. It hadn't happened yet because the camera I used last year was wall-mounted, but we've moved the lodge and now it needs to be sited in the garden on the grass. I built a stand using rolling pin and an old speaker-stand base. I used my standard maplin CCTV mini-camera mounted on top of this, and then to waterproof it, built a camera hood made from sugru. 

new CCTV camera looking at front of lodge..

Sugru is my new magic ingredient which can be moulded and stuck to almost anything and solidifies over the course of 24hrs into tough, waterproof silcone. So, here's hoping it does the job. 
And just for fun, a few other pictures:

rushing to get home... And a new box layout for our indoor bumblebees:

new box layout (with an attempt at some containment) for our indoor bees(We made some fake "wax" pots for our bumbles, to see what they do with them).

Removing Beepol Lid - part 2

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PROCEDURE IS INVASIVE ON THE BUMBLEBEE NEST AND CARRIES A HIGH RISK OF STINGING. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NORMAL DOMESTIC ENJOYMENT OF THE BEEPOL NEST

My first attempt to remove the beepol hive plastic lid had been unsuccessful and the lid was left in the nest (loose and unglued), so my immediate concern was to go back in late and night and remove it before it started getting incorporated into the nest structure! (I.e. before the bees started to build wax structures around and on it). 

The plan was simple: under cover of night and red light again, I would open the lodge very quickly, grab the lid and close before the bees really had chance to even come to the front of the lodge. There was going to be no pause to analyse or consider any bumbles on the lid - instead, we would place the lid immediately in a large plastic tub so that we had them contained, and then help get them back into the nest through the entrance.

The operation went very smoothly (as planned this time!) and was done without any harm to the residents. Two actually came out with the lid, trapped in the "one way entrance" chamber. (I'm not a fan of this chamber, we had bees die in here last year also). One of those bumbles turned out to be dead already, the other we coaxed out and onto the ledge. She stood guard for about 10 minutes, probably wondering how she had been miraculously transported from inside the nest to outside, but then found the entrance and went back inside without fuss.

view inside beepol - CH3 improved with lid removedThe view inside the beepol nest (CH2 & CH3) is now vastly improved, just as we had intended. We can clearly and easily see wax pots and lots of busy bees looking after them. 

not all flags and fake tubes

Every day I think I've finished our bumblebee setup, and every day I come up with something new. ☺

So, today I was lying in bed thinking I need more flags! When I say "flags",  I mean the fake flowers we made the other day. It occured to me we could use them mroe constructively to bring the exploring bumbles nearer to our nest entrances, and possibly train them to a degree by offering a reward if they follow them. It's well established that (honey) bees can be trained -e.g. to detect explosives and bumbleebees are trained during lab experiments. 

Anyway - I decided to create a row of flags leading to the boxes; to extend one above our garden wall so it is visible from outside the garden, and to flag each entrance to a nestbox. Anyway,  here are the pictures of the set up. 

descending row of hi-viz flags

flags by each of the nest entrance tubes

There is a small reward on some of the flags, by way of some sugar water. This may train any bumblebees to keep visiting the yellow flags, which will ultimately draw them nearer to the nest box entrances. 

row of flags approaching the nest boxes

I also decided that it might be useful to bury some more entrance tubes in the lawn. These don't go anywhere, but are intended just to be highly visible to Queens and give them a reason to explore the garden. By having more, there's a greater chance they will spot one in passing and investigate, thus increasing the chance of spotting others. 

fake entrance tube - using hi-vis tape for contrast

high flag on pussy willow - visible from outside the garden

Of course, it wasn't all flags and fake tubes today - I also had a spare input on the camera system which I wanted to use more productively. Usually it is just a wide view of the garden - more of a "security" camera view, but I had a spare "bullet cam" that was fixed to the house wall down low. I removed that and attached it to a nice big rock which I got from my parent's garden in the highlands. This gives me the flexibilty to move the camera wherever needed. Note the high-tech waterproofing! ☺

rock cam!

"Rock Cam" now provides the view seen in the very bottom right hand window of the screen, shown in "mission control" below. (Colour image). The three smaller images around it are from the nestboxes. And the three larger images are from the beepol lodge, which doesn't have its colony yet. 

the view from mission control with all cams installed

We can also get the "mission control" view on our iPhones and iPad, anywhere in the world. We can zoom into individual pictures if needed and get sound from the onboard camera microphones. 

remote viewing on iPhone

After all the setup, we went out and were quite quickly able to catch a couple of Queen in succession. We have a new capture technique (to be described later) and tried the first queen in the right hand box (box 3). It wasn't very successful and after a while she worked her way out of the capture tube (which we allowed to happen). So, we revised our tactics slightly and I was able to catch a big beautiful bufftailed queen. 

This time we introduced her to box 2 - the "pilkington" box (brown, centre) and she went in no bother. She too would have been able to get out if she wanted, by removing moss in the capture tube, but she actually stayed in the box. By the time 2 hours had passed, it had gone sunset, so she would not have left anyway due to the low light - so I'm pleased to say she has stayed overnight. 

We fully expect her to leave tomorrow morning - the question is, whether she finds the location desirable and memorises it for a future return. We'll set the CCTV to try and record her exit to see if she does. 

Queen in residenceAbove is the picture of the setup with the queen in residence. The capture tube is covered in a cloth to stop any stray light, but she can exit via the moss filled end if she wants. We added lots of daffodils so that there is immediate nearby food (and also to attract other bees to the garden, which worked: we have a redtail on them within 5 minutes). 

redtail queen on our newly added daffodilsSo, we now wait to see what tomorrow morning brings for our overnight guest... 

QB2012-06 in the nestbox overnight

Final stage: nestbox tech

It was phase 3 of the "Pilkington box" preparation today: installing the tech!

All our nestboxes and the beepol lodge are fitted with at least one (in some cases two) miniature CCTV cameras. They are small and discreet and have a built in microphone and infrared lighting - which means they can essentially see in the dark. They allow continuous monitoring of activity in the box, including the potential for motion detection. 

The other item to fit is a thermometer - the readout is external to the box, but a wire runs inside the box to sample the temperature. 

spy camera in nest box

Here's a wider view of the finished article. 

This is how the box looks located at its final site against our garage wall. The red filter is effective at allowing a view inside the nest without creating disturbance to any resdents. I haven't decided where to mount the thermometer yet. 

installation site for pilkington box

Next is the series of entrance tubes we have fitted. We have three boxes and five tubes. The idea of the tubes is to create a more natural looking entrance and also trick the bumblebees into thinking they are going underground - which of course is especially important for Bombus Terrestris (Bufftailed). 

We have tried to make the tubes look like holes in the undergrowth so that the bumbles we see them easily when scanning the garden for nest sites (of which we've seen several doing). 

entrance tube 1

Entrance tube 1 is for the left hand box. The coloured marking is to attract attention - we have noticed that the high-visibility tape is very successful at attracting bumbles. It would also provide an easier landmark to memorise should a queen check the box out and want to come back later. There is a small amount of old used mouse bedding in the entrance to create an aroma that is also appealing.

entrance tube 2

Entrance tube 2 is for the Pilkington box. This one is facing more directly upward so that it's more easily seen from a height. 

entrance tube 3a

There are three entrance "3's" - left (a), centre (b) and right (c) - as they are all connected to the right hand nestbox. This helps us try a few different designs of entrance. 

entrance tube 3b

entrance tube 3c

Finally, here is the full setup of nestboxes against our garage wall. We've trimmed the nearby grass to make the entrance tubes stand our more easily, but left some grass uncut so that the bumblebees are attracted into the garden in the first place to look for a possible nest site: they do seem to like searching over the uncut grass on the lawn.

We also have some "fake flowers" made of the yellow tape & canes to attract attention (not shown). We've seen several queens now flying from one to the other figuring out what they are. We've created a row that leads them down to the entrance tubes. We'll experiment with this to see what effect different arrangements have and whether it has any effect on queens looking for nests, or whether they don't combine forgaging behaviour with nest searching. 

the full nestbox setup with 3 boxes

We have lots of plants not shown in the picture which are now in bloom, including a Kilmarnock Pussy Willow, which seems to be very popular! But round the boxes we've put white and purple heather - the bumbles are very attracted to purple. 

So, aside from having some low-level radar ☺,  we have a pretty good setup to try and study the garden nest searching behaviour.

Hi Viz Gaffer tape & other brainwaves

Last night we had 3 bees with us - two under the cloche and one in the entrance of the buried nest box. The one in the buried box was not captive, so was free to go at any time. Looks like she probably did - as expected; certainly there was no activity on the camera inside the box itself and BCW did not report seeing anything. 

The day started very foggily and during the morning was only about 6C, so was a bit cold for any bumblebee activity (at 5C or below they tend to go into a 'frozen state' where they can't operate. And bear in mind they need to vibrate themselves to 30C to be able to fly!

So, the cloche had a lot of condensation on it, which made it difficult for BCW to see what was going on underneath, if anything. Later in the day it cleared a little and she saw the bufftailed queen on the side of the brick near the box (it is covering an ant trap). No sign of our little Early Bee though. Couldn't blame her if she wanted to just bed down and hide all day!

As I wasn't home today, I can also confirm that camera access via the iPAD is working very well. It's fabulous on the larger screen compared to the iPhone. I am using EagleEyeHD (which is designed for my DVR). I am on the THREE network and can get 3G signal at work - which delivers an excellent picture. Oddly the app doesn't seem to provide sound, even though the iPhone app supports sound no problem - which seems a bit odd. But the picture is good. Certainly good enough to know that there has been no obvious activity in any of the boxes yet!

Creating a colour splash - attracting attention

I also had the idea today of sticking some of my hi-vis gaffer tape on the end of canes in the garden today to attract the attention of passing bumbles. Some sources cite a bright yellow colour around the nest as a way to attract attention (and help memory) and it's something we actually did instintively last year around our Beepol nest. And on sunday we saw a big fat throaty queen fly round the garden and dinstictly check out a small tab of the bright yellow tape I had stuck on my CCTV cable (which was strung across some fence posts). Even if it only encourages a passing queen to dip down into our garden and have a quick mooch, it's worth a go, and increases the chance of her discovering the nest boxes. 

Location Tracking

I also had another bit of a brainwave yesterday to help with tracking and recording the location of where we find our queens. We know the general area from last year, but not the identical spot and density of population. This would be good to capture.

I realised that simple by taking a picture of the location, my iPhone would capture the GPS location and we could plot it later. In fact, most exciting is the new Adobe Lightroom 4 mapping feature (I've still yet to upgrade) which will allow me to produce maps of all the locations. Can't wait to try that out.  It's great to be putting all our tech to good use. 

Bumble infrastructure & Beepol modifications

A busy day today. Busier than the bees, as it was cool and windy, so I only saw one Bufftailed queen foraging on our heather. Meanwhile I was completing off all our "infrastructure" preparations - namely the nestboxes and CCTV. 

I've created a "photo diary" of what I did, which included some desired modifications to our beepol lodge - I hope fellow bumblers will find them useful. 

beepol lodgeAbove is the beepol lodge with last year's modifications - namely the extension to hold the external entrance camera. You can also see the new wax-moth entrance flap, which screws on as an attachment. This is new for the 2012 season. Everything else about the lodge is standard. 

bumblebee nest boxesAbove our our other two nestboxes. These have had various modifications from 2011 and one of them we can now add sugar/honey-water to from outside. I prepped them internally last week, but needed to check/reset the cameras and install thermometers. 

On the right is my fake "hill" - it covers the next box and can be placed up against a wall to disguise it. The idea is to make the bumblebees think the box is underground. We put lots of plants and grasses round it to add to the effect. 

fitting & testing the internal entrance cameraThis year we are putting two cameras in the lodge rather than one and thus placing them slightly differentlt. This camera above is trained directly at the entrance hole, and indeed can see right out through it - so I think we'll get some cool shots as bees come into land and come through the entrance. But also, the other reason for placing it this way is so that we can use the movement detection on the DVR to more reliably count bumbles in and out of the nest. 

2 cameras installedAbove 2 cameras are now installed - one will point down more into the nest so we can see activity below. They are quite fiddly to place and also to decide the best view when there is no nest in the box - but I have to assume that two cameras will be better than one! The other wire dangling down is the thermometer: more on that later. 

embedded thermometer on bumblebee lodgeThe next job I undertook was to embed a thermometer in the extended entrance porch. This was no easy job - it took the best part of 90 minutes to disassemble and drill/file out a hole and get it all back together again without breaking it - it's quite soft wood. But I'm really pleased with the result. The thermometer wire runs through a hole in the back and into the second lodge entrance which would otherwise be blocked, and is attached inside to measure the ambient temperature inside the nest. It's going to be a pain if the thermometer dies or needs its batteries changing, but so be it! I tried many variations of attaching the thermometer to the inside and outside of the lodge, but this is the neatest and also the thermo is visible to the external camera, which is a big help when reviewing footage. [That's a top tip from last year: it's very useful to have the temperature visible on camera].

view from external entrance cameracable tidy at rear of lodge

The next job (above) was to start tidying up the cabling at the back of the lodge from all the cameras. Some tacked-in cable clips do the job and makes the whole process of moving the lodge a bit easier and safer. 

sealing the edges against wax moth Next I attached some velcro along the edges of the box base. This is only the "loops" part (softer) and not the "hooks" part: we don't want the box to stick together, we just want all the imperfections and very slight gaps in the wood sealed over - the sticky-backed fabric is perfect for this. 

creating a bumblebee sizing chartAnother feature we wanted to add after last year's experiences was some kind of "sizing" chart inside the box, so that when bees move across the field of view we can get some indication of their size. This is useful for understanding whether they are queen, boy or girl, or under-formed etc. And also for indentifying the bee when there are only a few in the box. I discovered the graph paper didn't show up well on the camera, so i first marked all the corners in black pen. But that didn't show up on the infrared, so I had the brainwave of poking a hole at each corner and mounting the graph paper on some diamond grade high-visibility - the result is excellent under infra-red. 

view of size guide in daylightglowing "dots" on the size chart under infraredHowveer, when the lodge is closed and the camera switches to infra-red, the high visibility backing creates a series of glowing "dots" at 1cm spacing. This will be perfect for assessing the bee sizes as they enter and leave. 

base for the beepol lodge and shelterFor the base of the lodge this year we are using an old plastic board, with some extra high vis tape for grip. Also, the bees will be able to use this bright colour to memorise the nest location very easily, so if we needed to move it around the garden a bit, they should find their way back in ok! We are using this base instead of putting the lodge directly on the stones, just to help a bit in situations where bumbles fall from the nest, so that they don't get lost or buried in the stones directly underneath.

a nestbox in situ - with its "disguise"Above is one of the completed nest boxes on its site. It is partially buried and disguised by the expanding foam shelter. More grasses and heathers to come. We wil not interfere with this box and just hope that some nest searching queens explore it and choose to use it. You can see it also has an embedded temperature guage. 

The beepol lodge in situ, showing thermometer workingAbove is the beepol lodge in its intended location. The thermometer is working a treat! The shelter is not strictly necessary but we are just shading the box a little and also protecting it from rain. The bricks are greased round the side and help to keep ants from getting into the nest. 

both east-facing nest sites: beepol lodge and disguised nest box

internal layout of 2nd nest boxAbove is the internal layout of the 2nd nest box. This box has two cameras for greater coverage and i've created a tube at the back to supply food. This could allow us to keep a queen captive if we wish to try and oblige her to brood. The food would go down the tube into the pen lid attached to the side of the box. This box will be sited south facing at the rear of the garden and will be less disguised. This is the one we'll use to try and brood any queens we capture that are nest searching.

I still have to repatch all the video on the DVR in my studio to get all the right cameras coming up on the right channels with the right names, but apart from that we now just need to wait for the queens to start nest searching in earnest! 

Declaring Bumblebee season 2012 officially open!

Well, nature waits for no-one! Not for us and not for the Bumblebees!

It's only a few months (November) since we saw the last of our bumblebees. Sadly the remnants of our own colony died, but elsewhere Queens were busy hibernating. Winter was unusually warm this year, with only a couple of short cold snaps and the latter weeks of February have been very mild here in East Anglia. 

The trigger point was Thursday 23rd February, when temperatures reached about 15C here (and apparently 18C elsewhere) and lo and behold out came the bumblebees!

I was privileged to spot (and photograph) as many as half a dozen on the two heather plants at our front door, which are in full bloom (and were chosen specially for the job). There were two Tree Bees particularly interested on that day. Today ambient temperatures were a little lower but still enough to create lots of activity, not just from bumblebees but from honey/solitary bees too. Ambient temperature was about 12 - 14C, but the temperature on our south facing house wall, where the bees love to warm up, was a sultry 29C! Today we saw mainly bufftaileds. BCW and I disagree over whether we saw a white-tailed bumble as well: it was certainly more lemony, but I don't think the tail was white enough. So, we agree to differ. There are not a lot of flowers 

More excitement was created at the end of the afternoon as BCW saw one of the bumbles leave the heather and head into the flowery undergrowth near to our lavender. She burrowed down in there and didn't come out - so we know she is sleeping in the border just by our front door. I'd love to see her come out first thing tomorrow! 

So, this is the trigger for us to get busy preparing for the 2012 bumblebee year; and there is plenty to do:

• clean the beepol lodge and spray with Certan (anti-wax moth treatment)
• fit the beepol anti-wax moth flap
• "un-fit" and re-site the nestboxes that were placed for hibernation (and not used)
• start sorting out and re-routing all the CCTV (and consider drilling through the wall instead of using the window)
• replace faulty equipment (especially thermometers)
• fit a feeding system to the nest boxes

The work is well under way - here's what we've done and plan to do:

Beepol Lodge

We are re-siting the lodge to a less shady area of the garden, though still west-facing; we have to find the right balance of light, shade and temperature, bearing in mind the longest/warmest days. We are sitting the lodge on an old plastic sign, which will provide a good level and a safer area for bees that fall off the lodge (previously they fell in amongst the gravel/stones). We are also going to

We've sprayed the lodge again this year with Certan as an additional preventative measure against wax moth, as well as fitting the new flap system supplied by beepol. This system screws onto the existing ledge and has a plastic flap that wax moth cannot navigate - however, the bees can learn to operate it. 

Also this year I am going to fit 2 cameras inside the lodge so that we can see activity at the entrance (brilliant for counting bees in/out of the nest) but also see down into to the nest to see how it is developing - this will help eliminate the need to check on it by opening it so often. Also, we will fit a thermometer, which we didn't get chance to do last year. I've order the same "fridge" thermometers as last year as they can be surface mounted and I plan to drill a hole in the lodge to do so. 

Nest boxes

Even though we will buy a live Beepol colony again this year, we will still also provide nest boxes for "wild" queens, should they choose them. Last year we tried very hard to get wild queens to nest by capturing them and adding them to the nestboxes. One stayed three nights, but none of them actually stayed to nest. We will try a similar strategy this year, though not as intensive. We have come up with a different system for keeping Queens in the box - rather than trap them in there (a strategy we eventually abandoned) we have got a "greenhouse cloche" (about 2 feet high) that we can put over the box. That way we can include plants/flowers next to the box and let the queen fly and explore within the cloche, whilst restricting her to a small area. We hope this will be less stressful for them and leave them more inclined to choose to nest in the box. 

As ever, the nest boxes are equipped with internal CCTV cameras and also need new thermometers. I have also drilled a "feeding hole" into one of the boxes, so that we can add sugar/honey-water into a small holder on the inside wall of the box. This was something we wanted but didn't have last year when we kept some queens temporarily captive. 

We have put a small amount of dry moss and brown hamster bedding in the boxes (a smaller amount than last year, based on our observations of the live colonies and the space they need). We know the bees manage very well with the hamster bedding. 

One box will be sited south facing, the other east facing against our garage wall. We wil probably slightly bury the east-facing box and use my expanding foam "disguised" to make it look underground and just leave that box be, to see what happens and whether any bumbles choose it of their own accord. If any do choose it to nest, we will need to come up with a wax moth strategy!

Camera Work

There is plenty to do on the tech front also. Really for the CCTV system I now need a 16 channel DVR, but for now I will stick with my Quad box and 4 channel DVR which together allow me to use 8 cameras. It's just about good enough to get started, but unfortunately limits my ability to use motion detection to 3 key cameras. 

The other big consideration is whether to make the wiring more permanent and route the cables through the house wall, rather than via a window. I'm still debating whether to go ahead with this as the hole would have to be quite big.

The other addition to the camera arsenal is, of course, the new Canon 5D MkII. I've been testing that the last few days with a ring-flash for macro work and also my existing 80mm macro lens. The camera is already proving better because it can shoot longer bursts than my old camera and at significnantly higher resolution; although it would be nice to get a few more frames per second from it :-) 

Anyway, we are making good progress in getting prepared, though time is of the essence as the Bumblebees are already coming out of hibernation and will be looking for nests soon!

Another Myster-3

Temperatures took a real dip today and yesterday - for the first time we put the heating on in the house and ambient temperature this morning was about 7 degrees at 9am. This signals the start of tough times ahead for our bumblebee colony and is close to a minimum operating temperature for them, although of course they can generate their own internal heat to keep going: but could take a lot of energy.

So, I wasn't expecting much activity today, but we still saw 21 trips to-and-from the nest, which represents a reasonable number compared to recent days. Four of these were contributed by the Queen that has become resident. In fact, to my knowledge, 2 Queens are resident, but I'm not seeing much of one of them. 

The active Queen hasn't brought pollen back for the last two days either, even though workers have. I don't have a great explanation for this. If she's ready to keep her brood warm, we would expect to see her staying the nest full time. Maybe she is doing that now and maybe it's the second queen we are seeing on her trips from the nest - perhaps mating behaviour, or hibernation-spot searching. We just can't be sure. 

What I can be sure, is that for the last few days two queens have been in the box overnight - they must have been, because I've double checked the CCTV going back about 5 days and can match all the exit trips with entrance trips. So, if the trips cancel out, then by definition there must be the same number of Queens in the nest at the end of the day as at the start. And I can work that logic (and CCTV footage) back until the point where they were both confirmed in there together.

That makes today's discovery even more suprising - another Queen showed up. I have no footage for when she might have first left the nest, so it means one of two things: she is a third queen that has arrived from somewhere, or there has been a tech malfunction. 

To be honest, I find both hard to believe, but the tech malfunction moreso (I know, imagine that!) BUt there are three cameras with motion detect all running on the area where any bumblebee would have to leave the nest. The sensitivity and settings have all been fine tuned and working beautifully for months. There are no errors reported on the DVR and no breaks in footage and no video-loss alarms. All seems well in CCTV land. 

So, that leaves the explanation that she is a third queen. I'll admit it seems odd, she seemed able to make her way straight into the box as if she knew it. Later a Queen left and returned - I can't be sure if it was her, but that Queen did not need to do any memorisation - so if it was her, then it means she has been here before. 

In which case, maybe it's one of or August queens returned to shelter?

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.