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.

I was home tonight, so it was the first chance to video our beehive in "action". I was home just in time to see a handful of baby workers heading out and back to the fields before they settled down for the night.

Earlier in the day BCW had managed to catch a picture of a worker flying into the box.

worker bee entering nest box

Tonight we had to do a few things:

check the one-way flap into the box as we had seen bees trying to use it and apparently not succeeding
level the box properly with a spirit level to ensure there were no issues with the internal sugar water supply
insert a small thermometer so we can check the internal temperature of the box

Here's a video from when we took the lid off:

We were as quick and delicate as possible, conscious that the box would be cooling off with the lid off. I took the thermometer from our front nestbox for the timebeing and inserted the probe through the lid.

When we replaced the box and opened the entrance we were amazed and delighted to see a single junior worker bee come out and inspect the lid! Brilliant! Here's the video of it doing so:

I can't believe how small the worker bees are - they are really tiny - the small ones only about 1 cm in length. We saw one resting on the wall earlier in the evening, warming up (the wall was well over 20 degrees C while the ambient temperature was about 14C).

My mind is already working overtime about how we are going to get a camera in this box, safely and with minimal anxiety to the bees. I'm thinking I'll have to do some kind of trial run too, to run through the basic moves and recovery plan if something goes wrong!

It's a bit like a bank job in miniature!

Nik Sargent

Nik Sargent

Bumblebee Project Home / Blog

Nik Sargent

Introduction

Insights

Blog:

Lifting the Lid on things

Nik Sargent