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 did a little search to find out what pollen the bees outside on our lavender are carrying. So, that may seem rather stupid, but it's not necessarily all lavender - most of them have bright orange pollen, but some have yellow.

bright orange pollen in the baskets with flecks of yellow pollen all overyellow pollenIn the process I discovered this delightful little blog entry discussing exactly that topic - it contains some useful links to online resources for pollen matching.

Lavender pollen, as it happens is bright yellow - so the second bee above may be collecting lavender pollen, the bright orange isn't. I have a suspicion that the orange is actually asparagus, as we are located very much in farming region and surrounded by fields outside of the town. Indeed, the nearest field is broad-bean, so there could easily be something like asparagus nearby; and theasparagus crop was said to be early and good this year due to the unusually warm spring.

Check out the electron microscope pictures of pollen - they are amazing!

I spent some time last night trying to capture some macro shots of Holly in amongst the moss to demonstrate how good her camouflage is. When I looked at her this morning I'm sure her stripy bands were more dull! BCW agreed and had observed the same thing independently.

This is not the first time we have felt the vibrancy of her markings has changed - previously we had been attributing it to a poor state of health and possibly low nutrition. However, the fact it appears to have changed overnight while she is, basically, in a well-fed state sheds a new light on things and generates a whole series of thoughts:

Do the bands naturally vary in colour over time?
Is there a periodicity to this (e.g. daily)
Is it driven by other factors, such as levels of light, state of nutrition/health etc.?

As far as I'm concerned, these are intriguing questions; and given there seems to be little research done about the camouflage aspects of bee bandings, I suspect they are unanswered. I may be able to devise some experiments and measures to try and answer some of these questions.

We have started a page to start to explore the area of bee markings and camouflage.

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

What's in the basket?

Your Band

Nik Sargent