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.
It's pretty much been a bumble-filled day today (sunday) as well. I was determined to catch up on as much as possible.
Updates to observations
The observations page will probably never be finished, but it was definitely lacking a few items I'd forgotten and some photos and videos. So, I've added some information about trip times, some more video and some extra pictures plus a few other bits and bobs.
New Tumblr
I decided I wanted an immediate way to share photos, especially those taken in the field, just as a way to get more close up and personal with the lives of our bumbles. Although I can upload to this blog via the iPhone it's not really quite as immediate, and you don't necessarily want to write an article for just a single picture). So, I've created a tumblr page at www.lovebumblebees.com
More Data
Sometimes life feels like a constant stream of data - mainly because most of my data capture is manual at the moment (though improving in areas). So, I'm constantly playing catch up and this weekend was no different. However, I've managed to skim another 2 full days of CCTV and count all the trips and new memorisation flights.
So, for 18th and 19th April in our beepol nest (2012B1) we have:
total trips = 275
total memorisation flights = 44
total Queen trips (included in above number) = 18
total Queen memorisation flights (included in above number) = 7
If we add this to existing data for the first two days, it gives us a total of 180 memorisation flights (i.e. colony of at least 180 workers) and 12 Queen Memorisation flights (thus we assume 12 new queens!)
WOW!
Another Patient
I went outside today to cut the grass and just before I did so checked the live CCTV for anything nearby. Lo and behold a small bumble struggling to fly. I went to her rescue and tried to help her to the nest, but she was determined to make a break for it and fell to the floor. I decided I should rescue her and add her to the two we already have indoors.
She has the same disabilities as one of the others - exactly the same leg and wing not developed, so she cannot fly. She's slightly larger though. I added her to the box with the others and all seems to be going well. From what I have seen they are all having a good drink as required.
Our third inpatient for 2012 - quenching her thirst on some spilt honey water
For the last few days I have been looking at the overnight DVR footage each morning to see if there are any interesting. Here's a few things we have noticed:
1. Starting the day
The first bumblebees start to emerge from the nest around the time the sun starts to shine directly on it. We can tell this because when the sun shines directly into the nest (it faces East) it triggers the internal camera to switch off the infra-red and we can see this happen on our video recordings. It's around this time we then start seeing the first bees heading off to fields. It's also easy to see them exit the nest as when they enter the entrance tube, they block the sunlight momentarily and the camera switches back to infra-red. This appears as a kind of "flashing" effect on the video and gives us a second or two notice that a bee is about to emerge!
This actually ties in with behaviour we saw with our queens when they used to emerge from the front nestbox at around 10am. Although this box faced North, it was around this time that the sun would shine off our window and bounce directly onto the nestbox entrance. This currently suggests to us that the bees' outdoor exploratory behaviour is triggered by the levels of sunlight entering the nest. It probably stands to reason, but the beauty of observing in the 'wild' rather than in a lab is we can see this correlation more directly.
2. The first trip of the day is the "paper run"
At the time of writing (mid May) our bees are first emerging from the colony at around 7am in the morning. As it happens, over an hour before that, we saw a Common Carder bee on the lavender right next to our nest. We don't know if being an ealier riser is symptomatic of their type, or just down to the location of their nest, light levels and so on.
Assuming, however, that we don't have any bees staying out overnight from the nest (a possiblity if they get caught out in bad weather), then we can pretty much time how long these early bees spend out when they first leave. This morning we were able to count about 4 out and 4 back in between about 7.30 and 8am.
On average they were spending about 15 minutes away from the nest. They are not coming back laden with pollen at this time, perhaps just partaking of a light organic breakfast!
3. Young are hatching in increasing numbers
We cannot see the hatching area inside the nestbox. The main reason is the camera is not pointing at it! - but that's because we were unable to find it. The true layout of the box will not be revealed till the end of the season when we can deconstruct it - but it seems that most of the action is happening below a rather sturdy (possibly supported) layer of nesting material which we cannot get access to.
However, we know that young are hatching because we are seeing them leave the nest. And we know it's the young leaving the nest because they perform a special "memorisation" and "landmarking" routine when they leave the nest for the first time.
This is quite a fascinating and recognisable routine, so I've put some videos together below - the first one shows their behaviour close the entrance as they memorise it. The second one (about 30 seconds in) shows the wider circling behaviour as they map out the landmarks in the nearby area:
Between 7am and Midday we counted about half-a-dozen new bees today - a record so far.
We also observed one or two bees actually performing this type of behaviour on the way IN to the nest (you can see one at the end of this video). This has us slightly baffled - at the moment our best hypothesis is that perhaps these are bees on the first time back to the nest and they are re-affirming their memory of the nest, double-checking they are not heading into the wrong territory. Pure speculation on our part.
There's not much time to sleep
We can use the motion detection feature on the DVR to monitor how much activity occurs in the nestbox during the night. We were very interested to see if the bees ever really went to sleep or carried on being busy throughout the night. What we've observed is that there is less activity during the wee small hours of the night but they never really stop completely. The quietest time is between 2am and 3am - during that time, for example, there might be one or two bees during the whole hour that come into view of the camera. Outside of those hours the rate is higher.
At some point I'm hoping to count these up and produce some firmer stats (unfortunately this is a bit of a manual task). The intention is also to correlate the daytime activity with weather data also.
It should be borne in mind that our camera is not in the heart of the nest, but pointed over (we think) the sugar-water wick used for drinking/feeding. So, the night-time activity we see is likely to represent feeding behaviour rather than whatever-it-is might be happening deep inside the nest. One of the behaviours we also see at this position appears to be night-time perimeter patrol. These are bees that traverse the edge of the box, sometimes nudging others out of the way, but don't stop to feed or tug on the nest material.
The idea of a security patrol is not entirely ludicrous. We have already observed on several occasions, after disrupting the nest, a lone bee coming to inspect the damage and survey the scene. Mpst revcently, when we inserted the camera into the nestbox and re-opened the hive entrance, a bee came into that entrance and sat there as if on "lookout". It didn't come out onto the box to inspect it, but just sat in the entrance, blocking it and watching us. It was a bit uncanny really!
Anthropomorphism
Of course, we don't have full scientific explanations for all the activities we see, so it's easy to anthropomorphise the bee behaviours with Human explanations. On the other hand, bees are social animals, so it makes some sense that there could be roles that aid the stability of the colony.
