Expanding on the Expanding foam

It was a great day again on Sunday so I took the opportunity to wield the expanding foam again. The plan was to do two things:

• modify our "triple 3-into-1 tube" set of fake entrances to be covered in moss and look more realistic - with the entrance holes much more vertical standing so they can be seen easily from above. 
• create an additional nest site from an old poster tube - the idea was to site this amongst the longer grass where the bumblebees have been nest searching, to make it look like a mossy embankment. 

It was all very easy - I've documented the steps in pictures below.

First i made a cardboard base for the "nest tube" and covered it in "bin bag" plastic. The plastic will go face down, to stop the cardboard getting damp and rotting. The top side will be protected by the expanding foam. 

I separated the two ends of tube by packing it with moss and a little hamster bedding. To create a slightly different environment, favoured by different species of bumbles I put a little more bedding in one end and stones in the other. 

contents of one end of the tube

As an extra precaution I fed 10mm tubing into the end of the pipe, to create extra ventilation (and potentially an inspection pathway). 

ventilation & access tube

I stuck the pipe to the base with gaffer tape. As ever I included a thermometer, down into the centre of the tube. Soft drink bottle bases cover the ends. It ended up looking like some kind of crazy bomb. I can assure you it's perfectly safe. ☺

assembled nest tube, with thermometer, before foam is added

Next the fun (and messy bit) - cover the tube in expanding foam. As is started to dry (about 15 minutes) I spray painted it dark brown (mud / earth colour). Looks like a nice cake! ☺

nest tube covered in expanding foam

As it continued to dry, but still a little tacky, I covered in moss, collected earlier in the week. 

moss layer completed

The placed amongst the longer grass. Not sure how I can make it any more real than this, other than actually digging up the lawn! The dark patch on the right hand side is of particular interest. 

final site of nest tube in long grass

Next, the same trick for our "3 into 1" tubing, which goes to a nest box. I made a cardboard wedge from an old box and waterproofed the same way. Note, I poked drain holes along the tubes. 

3-way tube being prepped for foam

Then the foam, as before. The two uppermost pipes are fake.. they are blocked off - just there for additional effect. 

foam added

Again, spray painted brown, then the moss added while tacky.

triple tube, covered in moss..

Here's a view of the two systems in place along the central line we have created down the garden. Bumblebees like to navigate along linear features, often edges (e.g. gravel / grass edge, or crop edge). Our flags and long grass creates the linear feature (and actually shows some signs of working!).

tubes in situ, leading to small nest box

Close up of the 3-into-1 tubes. We are experimenting with one yellow entrance. We do not really expect interest in this, because the Queens tend to think it is a flower, not a hole. But the experiment will see how rigidly they stick to this basic understanding. You can see the nestbox that the tubes lead to. 

close up. 

Finally a view of the entire feature.

full setup - with clear linear featureOur next job will be to simplify the clutter along the left of the picture - the edge is not sufficiently defined and we think the plants (mainly heather) are too close to the nest areas. We'll move them to the cloche area and again try to create a strong linear feature along the lawn edge.

BCW saw 3or 4 queens nest searching in the garden today. They had slightly improved interest in our setup, but not enough to fully explore any of the entrances. We'll get there!

Going crazy with expanding foam again!

Here's how I made a shelter for our forthcoming Koppert Bumble Beehive box.

For farmers Koppert recommend a simple sheet of polystyrene foam with a brick on top to hold it down - but to me this seems a bit cheap and cheerful and not necessarily well engineered against bad wind and rain. So, I wanted to do something a bit more creative and potentially robust. 

Having quite successfully made my fake "grass hummock" last week out of expanding foam I decided I could use a similar system to create a protective cover for the new beebox nest. I've been thinking about the design for quite a number of days and it seemed this would be simple and fairly cheap to do. I don't have any wood-working or metal-working equipment (or skills!), so this is a simple solution; even a child could do it. 

However, the structure needs to be more robust than the pure foam structure I created for the "hummock" - as it pretty much rests directly on top of the existing box. However, this structure cannot rest on the box; but more importantly, it must be very resistant to weather - especially the wind which can be very strong here. It would be a complete disaster if it was able to blow over. So, some requirements for this:

1. enough strength to support being weighted down - e.g. with bricks
2. ability to mount some brackets, which is necessary can be fixed to the garage wall
3. overall enough structural strength to hold together even if flexed and blow about

My solution is actually to build a skeleton within the structure with some chicken wire; line this with plastic to ensure excellent waterprooofing; and then apply the foam to this structure to create the overall shelter. 

The steps are outlined below. 

step 1 - measuring out the chicken wireThe chicken-wire is easy to work with - I just measured it to twice the size I needed. 

step 2 - heavy duty plastic folded into the chicken wireThen folded the wire with some heavy duty plastic (you could cut up a bin bag) sandwiched between.

step 3 - creating a folded template over an existing boxThen I folded this over a box that I had checked, double-checked and triple-checked was big enough to cover for the size of the beebox PLUS the bricks it will sit on PLUS room to open/shut the bee entrance control PLUS an overhang to provide shade over the front of the box. It pays to do the arithmetic up front!

step 4 - applying expanding foam to the structureThis actually took two large cans of expanding foam. It's quite tricky to do the sides as it can drop off - so you have to be patient and work in small blobs. That's why the surface looks the way it does. 

Notice also the brackets that are wound into the chicken wire. These provide a future option to tether the shelter to the garage wall if needed. 

step 5 - painting in a light stone colourThen I painted the shelter with some cans of plastic spray paint. Really quick and easy to do. We chose quite a light stone colour which blends against the garage fairly well. 

step 6 - cover installed in location with a "test box" underneath on greased bricksThe greased bricks are to keep the beebox off the ground and prevent ants and insects from being able to crawl up into it. For this reason the beebox should touch any plants or other objects. We also have an ant-trap right next to it. 

I'm testing the shelter for a few days with an empty box inside. If it remains there safely through any blustery weather, I'll be happy. So far so good. For now the shelter is held down with two bricks on the purpose designed "feet". It's actually very stable like that.

view of the box cover with the video camera mounted about itI've also mounted a video camera over the box. At this stage I don't know if it will be possible to get a camera inside the koppert box, so we've put a camera over it. We'll put plants and pollen on top of the shelter that will attract the bees and we'll be able to see them going in and out of the entrance. The camera is all set up and tested and we can view it on the main TV in the house. 

Faking It

Today's bee activities we are a bit unplanned. We had a "non-bee" day yesterday as we were away on Easter day, so took the day off, so to speak. Today we had some things in the garden to sort out, so were only planning a small bee search later in the afternoon.

We are particularly looking for Carder bees, as we read they are less fussy about the nest conditions; and now is the time to be finding them. We went out to the usual place but we were seeing very few bees. At about 5pm it was about 13 degrees in the shade, 16 degrees in the sun. Quite a blustery windchill factor and it just seemed like it was not a "bee day".

On the return journey we did see a few bees - all in all, 2 carder bees (which were impossible to catch), one smaller bee (possibly a carder worker), two redtails (one feeding on the crop in the field, the other mooching about the grass) and a bufftail. I managed to catch the bufftail (BB29). We took her to the front box, but she took 20 minutes to go in and then only stayed in the box about 20 minutes before leaving; to be expected really. 

Nest Enhancements

 Today I had some leftover expanding foam from another DIY job, so right there and then I decided to make a fake protective "hummock" for the rear nest box. I'd been thinking of something like this for some time as a way to protect from the heat of the sun as well as rain, but also to try and provide more of that convincing "underground" sensation.

So, you may be wondering how a grassy hummock counts as underground? Well, although it is over-ground in terms of the ground around it, I'm banking (no pun intended) on the fact that if it's sufficiently realistic, then it will seem like it is properly in the ground, i.e. surrounded by earth; and that if the bee enters and feels like they are heading downwards to the nest area, then it will prove sufficiently convincing. Anyway, given that it cost under a tenner to make, it seemed worth a try. There's a great BBC video that shows bees active inside their nest and when you look at how they've made the film it looks like they might have done exactly the same thing as me (albeit to a higher standard).  

expanding foam over nest box to create mould.  First I covered the existing box in plastic and used it as a mould to spray the foam over. 

box used as mould for expanding foamOnce the foam had dried (about 40 mins) I painted it with spray on "plastic paint". This is designed for painting plastic surfaces and it dries very quickly (touch-dry within 10 minutes). 

foam sprayed greenThe green is unfortunately very lurid! But that was the choice i was stuck with. So I also bought some brown paint that looked a muddy colour. In fact, since we have regularly seen bees nest-searching in muddy bank and have even located a real nest in a muddy hole in the ground, this seemed like a reasonable addition.

"mud" colour added to the constructionIt's starting to look a lot more realistic now - and look at all those lovely nooks and crannies for bees to explore! After this step had dried, I trimmed off the excess plastic sheet from underneath and also sprayed the underside green. 

Once the "hummock" is in place, it is covered in bits of grass and straw and plants in order to help it blend in. 

completed hummock (rear view)completed box in situ - front bee's-eye viewAs part of this modification we also changed the internal box material again today. Although we recently added some field hay, we've done a u-turn on this and decided to go with moss instead - this is reported as being favourable in general and something Carder bees like in particular as they are able to work it well; and will even bring moss to the box if they need to. 

 Future options

The expanding foam is surprisingly easy and quick to work with - I'd pretty much completed the above project within an hour. The problem is, I've left it a bit late for this year's nesting queens, so really I now need to start thinking about next year.

I'm already formulating some ideas, which could include a complete false embankment along our back fence with multiple embedded nest boxes, as well as different types and sizes of holes and cavities. With such a set up, we could run a big experiment with multiple nests to figure out what really works best. With enough preparation time I could kit it out with all the technology I need: thermometers, infra-red, video cameras, microphones etc. 

And if you want to hire me for any futuristic set-building in future, give me a call ;-)

Open Sesame - Nestbox Entrance Design

Over the weekend we made yet further modifications to the layout and entrances of our nestboxes. It has been a process of constant tinkering, which in itself might be argued contributes to a lack of success attracting a Queen Bee. On the other hand, all the information we've read suggests that commercial nest boxes like those we are using have very low success rates. Apparently even research scientists struggle to achieve 10% occupancy in nest boxes. 

So, our strategy has been to apply "bee logic" as we have gone along: to take all we have read and learned alongside everything we have observed in the wild to try and combine all the best elements as seen through "bee eyes". This has been a process with several phases, making adapations to the following elements:

• the internal layout of the box
• the position of the boxes
• the environment surrounding the boxes (including other plants and flowers)
• the features of the entrance both internally and externally

In this article I'm going to discuss the latest enhancements to the entrance. It should be borne in mind that when I say "enhancements" this combine human enhancements (i.e. things that improve our ability to work with the nestbox) and suspected bee enhancements (i.e. things we think will appeal to the bees).

Box Tube with Funnelled Entrance 

One of the pieces of advice we had read regularly but not yet acted on was to use some tubing inside the nestbox, which is thought to create a stronger sense of going underground for the Bumblebee. Since most of them either insist, prefer or are happy to nest underground, it seems like good advice. And to be honest, we probably should have tried it earlier. 

We've seen this technique in two separate guises and we have combined both:

• a short tube inside the box which leads the bee towards the nest area
• a longer tube outside the box, possibly paritally buried, which gives a sense of tunneling underground

I tried a few bits of random tubing I had lying around to no avail - nothing really fitted properly and we were also concerned not to make the entrance too narrow for the bees to safely pass through. So, in the end I opted to use some cable ducting, designed to make the cables at the back of your TV tidier. This tubing is actually split all down the centre so that you can adjust it's diameter to any size. 

So, here's the first piece of tubing:

Entrance tubing using cable tidy tubingI trimmed the tube so that the overlaps were minimal. The gaffer tape is keeping the tube together at the "narrow end" which inserts into the actual nest box entrance. I suspect the ridges are quite useful as they will channel any water, although the aim is to keep it as dry as possible as bees do not like the wet. I also used a bradawl to create holes all along the tube so that it can drain whatever orientation it is.

A short piece of tube like this was pushed halfway into the entrance hole inside the box - nothing more to do there.

For the outside we needed to create a flat or funnel shape, because if we are manually introducing bees to the box, we need to be able to "dock" the pot we capture them in; i.e. we have to be able to seal the pot against the box so that the bee cannot escape. The solution I can up with was to attach the top of a soft-drink bottle to the tube:

full entrance pipe with "docking funnel"It all looks a bit heath robinson but do bear in mind this is just a first version, so there is scope to improve it going forward. The gaffer tape actually serves a very useful purpose aside from being great at holding it all together: it helps to create smooth, soft edges. 

It also turns out that the pot BCW (Bee Catching Wizard) is using to catch bees actually fits this diameter perfectly and will "dock" into the funnel such that it can be left hands-free. See below:

Fully "docked" entrance tubeIn case you are wondering what the hi-vis reflective tape is for, this is to help us see the entrance when it is in situ, because it is quite well camouflaged and surrounded by grasses. It also helps at night when we have found it very hard to see: a quick flash of a torch will easily locate the entrance. 

In the next picture you can see the full system fully assembled:

fully assembled "docking" system on nestbox 1The picture above shows nestbox one - which our best equipped box (it has two cameras). You can see the overall layout inside the box too, as well as the two cameras. The reflective tape inside the box serves a similar purpose: it helps align the cameras and make sense of the view once the lid is on and it is dark. There is nothing particularly special about the pattern of stickers, it's fairly random!

Once the tube is installed we are able to apply some camouflaging, as below:

camouflaged entrance on front boxSince taking this picture, we've actually greatly increased the foliage and camouflage around the entrance and it looks fabulous. The good thing is - and here comes the bee logic - it looks like a really obvious hole in the foliage that is surely worthy of exploration by any curious Queen Bee. I'm pretty confident if they were poking around this part of our garden they would be tempted to have a look; which is the (w)hole point!

Box Tube with Foam Entrance

Because we have the luxury of two boxes, we have tried something a little different on the second box. This is really just to hedge our bets as we don't know if a bee is smart enough to tell the above entrance is a bottle and possibly a piece of litter. Or maybe it is too shiny and smooth. When we reflect on our observations of where Bumbles are looking for nests, it's in long tall grasses or dried, cracked muddy embankments, quite often near trees or bramble bushes. So, these are all parameters we have to consider and try to mimic. 

So, for the rear box, we have used some "dry foam" (which is used for flower arranging) as a block into which to mount the entrance tubing. In all other senses the box is the same, although the exterior camouflaging is also different and the box only has one camera.

box 2 layout Once installed this is how the box looks with a bee's-eye view (see below). Although the exposure in this picture is a bit bright, the foam block is light brown and resembles a piece of muddy embankment. (We could even carve some rough shapes in it, if we were so inclined.)

new "foam block" entrance on box 2Here is a picture of Bumblebum 28 resting on the foam block. She refused to enter both boxes and tucked herself up under the grasses to sleep.

BB28 resting on the foam block, box 2

We've not yet tested these designs in the wet, so once that has happened there may be further work to do. In particular, I'm not sure how well the foam will stand up to the rain, so that is something I will monitor closely. Aside from that I'm very pleased with the effect - and I just hope the Bees are also suitably tempted by the new "look".