We created the World's first tweeting bumblebees, and went on to win the Internet of Things Award (Environmental) 2012! Thank you to our readers for your votes!
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.
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.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect today, having come to the conclusion that three queens chose to share the nest last night, one of which we think is brooding.
One of the others has been in there a few days and we've not had concrete visibility of her, so it's possible she's actually died in the nest, as indeed our "August" (2nd Generation) queen did.
The third queen turned up yesterday and was quite happy to head into the nest and stay there overnight. I didn't know if she would venture out today or what her behaviour pattern would be.
I got my answer at 10am when she was the first queen to leave, because she tentively crept out of the nest and performed memorisation circling around the entrance to memorise the location of the nest. This means it was her first exit and that she planned on coming back. Sure enough, 21 minutes later she returned and from what I can tell, spent the rest of the day in the nest, probably trying to keep warm.
A new visiting queen, memorising nest location
It was a cold day again today, peaking at 12.4 degrees, so I didn't expect to see much activity or foraging. How wrong I was - trip count was up again on yesterday at 46, levels not seen since September. The Queen (can't be sure which one) is contributing to these trips (8 Queen trips today) which is helping to lift the activity level.
In fact activity stats for the last few days are as follows:
11/10/20118
12/10/201110
13/10/20115
14/10/201121
15/10/201112
16/10/201117
17/10/201122
18/10/201121
19/10/201146
As we can see, quite an upturn in the last few days, despite the temperature drop. This, I suspect, is driven by the Queen brooding. Bombus Terrestris are natural pollen collectors - they just keep doing it when the nest is functioning. So despite the fact the workers have shifted loyalty from their (expired) mother queen to a new queen, they seem quite happy working hard for her.
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?
Yesterday was a bit of a mad day with the nest - so much so, I was finding it hard to review footage and collect data while also keeping an eye on live activity.
The big anticipation of the day was whether Big Mamma would make a break from the nest or not, but as it turned out, despite the cardboard step we introduced into the nest for her, she was still unable (or unwilling) to leave.
My hunch mode had been kicking in too, regarding the possibility of yet more new hatching going in. My hunches are starting to become pretty reliable!
Yet another slow start again for the colony today, although the temperature was ridiculously mild for the time of year - we are being predicted a very warm week ahead. So much so, that by mid morning there'd been no sign of "stop out" bee returning; marking yet another shift in behaviour patterns.
For reasons that will become evident by the end of this article, I decided to stop trying to track and count each and individual bee - as it's now become too onerous to unqiuely identify them. In fact, I've completely lost count of how many of each size are really alive in the nest, as each day there seems to be evidence of additional bumbles that may be leaving and not coming back. These, of course, could be males.
All all I know there are 2, possibly 3 baby size (the smallest we'd seen to date), one big mamma queen size, one very large almost seems queen sized that keeps catching me out and anywhere between 1 and 3 mid size, of which our "stop out" bee was one. But there is still "mid size" activity today, so even if he/she hasgone, there are others.
Going micro
Late morning I decided to review the day's CCTV so far when my jaw dropped. There in the nest was the most miniscule of bees I have ever seen. She was even smaller than Holly (the disabled bee we cared for). My hunch had been right.
She was also exhibiting the now-classic newly-hatched behaviour: exploring the nest and entrance but not venturing out yet. Here she is, compared to the size of a regular soft-drink bottle top in the middle of the picture.
first glimpse of brand new tiny beeIt was almost unfathomable that she could be so small and beautifully formed. I estimate she's about 1/4 to 1/5 the size of big mamma - that could make her about 1/100th the volume!
Soon she came out to the entrance and I watched live with great anticipation as I prepared to see her first flight. She came out onto the ledge turned and then started exploring that too and then up over the roof of the porch. This is the moment I hate, as there is slippy tape and plastic on the porch which many an uncertain bee has fallen from. She too befell the same fate, slipped and fell to the ground. I dashed out to find her and eventually after much searching spotted her:
I managed to get her back into the nest, for now; and she sat in the entrance, still, letting all the other bees walk over her!
While all this was going on Big Mamma was still making some failed attempts to get through the join between the lid and the base. I tried to encourage her to the entrance hole proper with some powerful lighting from outside the nest - it's where the light is that she is going for. This didn'twork for her, but it did seem to bring a few more nest lurkers into view. Amongst them was yet another tiny bee. I was truly astonished, but there was no doubting it - both of them were there together on the CCTV inside the nest.
There may even be three - it's hard to tell exact sizes from this photo, but there is one tiny one in the bottle top (centre), one very small one above it, and the original tiny one in the entrance top right.
3 extremely small and previously unseen bumblebees all together
Eventually one of the tiny bees came back out to the entrance and started climbing all over the shelter. This is a bad sign. This is what happened with all the bees we had to care for indoors - basically they never flew. Sadly, I think this tiny wee one is destined to the same fate, So now we have her indoors in a tub, fed and being kept warm. She can crawl and run with great pace and agility, but so far has not taken off; indeed, one of her wings is a little bent, and this may be her disability.
Forcible Eviction
I was barely recovering from the excitement and shock of dsicovering three microscopic bees when another smallish one emerged from the nest. It seemed to be carring something - at first I thought it was pollen, but a review of the CCTV shows it was in fact some kind of larvae. (UNHAPPY FACE). Even more astonishingly, we watched on as this bee perfromed nest memorisation. Her first trip!! Sent to eject an unwelcome visitor.
She returned 10 minutes later. At the time, watching live, I was baffled by what I was seeing, because she spent a lot of time almost "reverse memorising" the entrance before she came in. Indeed, she spent longer flying round it on the way in than on the way out.
On reviewing the CCTV, all became clear: she dashed out carrying a larvae to get rid of and wasn't really able to conduct a typical memorisation procedure due to her wriggling payload, which needed taking away from striking distance of the nest quickly. She did the bare minimum required to memorise the look and location of the nest and then took the larvae away. On return she found the nest site ok, but she had to examine the front in more detail to establish the exact entrance. So, she essentially reversed her tracks to find her way back in. Truly Awesome first flight!
But get this - she was carrying some pollen. Yep, in the short 10 minutes of her first flight, used to eject an nest invader, she also took the trouble to go and collect some pollen. Now, ifthat aint commitment.
Two hours later, we saw another similar eviction:
larvae being carried from the nestlarvae being carried from the nest - front angleIn the second picture in particular, you can see the larvae quite clearly hanging from the bee's mandibles. I timed this trip and it was more or less exactly 2 minutes. It's safe to assume that she can fly at 10 metres per second (I have timed them at well above this), in which case her outward trip of 1 minute would take her 600 metres away from the nest. Let's call it half a kilometre. Pretty impressive.
Of course, the bad bad news here is that there are some kind of larvae in the nest. I don't know what type they are or how many. We have seen the occasional fly in the nest and a small moth the other day - either of those, I suppose, could be candidate mothers. I hope so much it is not wax moth - but we will probably take a look inside tonight to see if there's anything we can spot. Not that we can do much of course if we discover more. Certain is supposed to kill Wax Moth larvae, but whether we can spray it into a live nest is another matter.
