Declaring Bumblebee season 2012 officially open!

Well, nature waits for no-one! Not for us and not for the Bumblebees!

It's only a few months (November) since we saw the last of our bumblebees. Sadly the remnants of our own colony died, but elsewhere Queens were busy hibernating. Winter was unusually warm this year, with only a couple of short cold snaps and the latter weeks of February have been very mild here in East Anglia. 

The trigger point was Thursday 23rd February, when temperatures reached about 15C here (and apparently 18C elsewhere) and lo and behold out came the bumblebees!

I was privileged to spot (and photograph) as many as half a dozen on the two heather plants at our front door, which are in full bloom (and were chosen specially for the job). There were two Tree Bees particularly interested on that day. Today ambient temperatures were a little lower but still enough to create lots of activity, not just from bumblebees but from honey/solitary bees too. Ambient temperature was about 12 - 14C, but the temperature on our south facing house wall, where the bees love to warm up, was a sultry 29C! Today we saw mainly bufftaileds. BCW and I disagree over whether we saw a white-tailed bumble as well: it was certainly more lemony, but I don't think the tail was white enough. So, we agree to differ. There are not a lot of flowers 

More excitement was created at the end of the afternoon as BCW saw one of the bumbles leave the heather and head into the flowery undergrowth near to our lavender. She burrowed down in there and didn't come out - so we know she is sleeping in the border just by our front door. I'd love to see her come out first thing tomorrow! 

So, this is the trigger for us to get busy preparing for the 2012 bumblebee year; and there is plenty to do:

• clean the beepol lodge and spray with Certan (anti-wax moth treatment)
• fit the beepol anti-wax moth flap
• "un-fit" and re-site the nestboxes that were placed for hibernation (and not used)
• start sorting out and re-routing all the CCTV (and consider drilling through the wall instead of using the window)
• replace faulty equipment (especially thermometers)
• fit a feeding system to the nest boxes

The work is well under way - here's what we've done and plan to do:

Beepol Lodge

We are re-siting the lodge to a less shady area of the garden, though still west-facing; we have to find the right balance of light, shade and temperature, bearing in mind the longest/warmest days. We are sitting the lodge on an old plastic sign, which will provide a good level and a safer area for bees that fall off the lodge (previously they fell in amongst the gravel/stones). We are also going to

We've sprayed the lodge again this year with Certan as an additional preventative measure against wax moth, as well as fitting the new flap system supplied by beepol. This system screws onto the existing ledge and has a plastic flap that wax moth cannot navigate - however, the bees can learn to operate it. 

Also this year I am going to fit 2 cameras inside the lodge so that we can see activity at the entrance (brilliant for counting bees in/out of the nest) but also see down into to the nest to see how it is developing - this will help eliminate the need to check on it by opening it so often. Also, we will fit a thermometer, which we didn't get chance to do last year. I've order the same "fridge" thermometers as last year as they can be surface mounted and I plan to drill a hole in the lodge to do so. 

Nest boxes

Even though we will buy a live Beepol colony again this year, we will still also provide nest boxes for "wild" queens, should they choose them. Last year we tried very hard to get wild queens to nest by capturing them and adding them to the nestboxes. One stayed three nights, but none of them actually stayed to nest. We will try a similar strategy this year, though not as intensive. We have come up with a different system for keeping Queens in the box - rather than trap them in there (a strategy we eventually abandoned) we have got a "greenhouse cloche" (about 2 feet high) that we can put over the box. That way we can include plants/flowers next to the box and let the queen fly and explore within the cloche, whilst restricting her to a small area. We hope this will be less stressful for them and leave them more inclined to choose to nest in the box. 

As ever, the nest boxes are equipped with internal CCTV cameras and also need new thermometers. I have also drilled a "feeding hole" into one of the boxes, so that we can add sugar/honey-water into a small holder on the inside wall of the box. This was something we wanted but didn't have last year when we kept some queens temporarily captive. 

We have put a small amount of dry moss and brown hamster bedding in the boxes (a smaller amount than last year, based on our observations of the live colonies and the space they need). We know the bees manage very well with the hamster bedding. 

One box will be sited south facing, the other east facing against our garage wall. We wil probably slightly bury the east-facing box and use my expanding foam "disguised" to make it look underground and just leave that box be, to see what happens and whether any bumbles choose it of their own accord. If any do choose it to nest, we will need to come up with a wax moth strategy!

Camera Work

There is plenty to do on the tech front also. Really for the CCTV system I now need a 16 channel DVR, but for now I will stick with my Quad box and 4 channel DVR which together allow me to use 8 cameras. It's just about good enough to get started, but unfortunately limits my ability to use motion detection to 3 key cameras. 

The other big consideration is whether to make the wiring more permanent and route the cables through the house wall, rather than via a window. I'm still debating whether to go ahead with this as the hole would have to be quite big.

The other addition to the camera arsenal is, of course, the new Canon 5D MkII. I've been testing that the last few days with a ring-flash for macro work and also my existing 80mm macro lens. The camera is already proving better because it can shoot longer bursts than my old camera and at significnantly higher resolution; although it would be nice to get a few more frames per second from it :-) 

Anyway, we are making good progress in getting prepared, though time is of the essence as the Bumblebees are already coming out of hibernation and will be looking for nests soon!

Yes, gravity still works...

It's tricky when things turn out not quite as expected and there's a whole variety of things to report, so to be brief here's a round up of today's events and findings:

• We have some quick responses from the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust on the ID of some bee pics we submitted. The most exciting of these was a possible Red Shanked Carder - which is like a Redtail but apparently has red hairs around the pollen baskets. Ours did, although it was a male, so strictly did not have pollen baskets. The verdict is indeed it was a Redtail - we are told by the BBCT they often have red hairs. This seems to contradict their own ID information which says they are black. So, glad to have clarification but yet another source of frustration in trying to ID the bees.
• Our ID of some Tree bees was confirmed as well as Early Bees, so it's great to have a positive on that and some photos to match. Also my ID on the Garden Bee (where I got the really close up face photos) was confirmed too. I thought maybe some kind of cuckoo bee, but the expert says not. 
• Finally, nothing conclusive on the "camouflaged" bee I found in the ditch alongside the Garden bee mentioned above other than some kind of cuckoo. It is probably either a Gypsy Cuckoo, Field Cuckoo, or Barbut's Cuckoo. I actually favour the latter due to the extra light brown band on the lower thorax and given it was 2 feet away from the garden bumble bee (which it typically attacks) there's a certain serendipty to it. 
• We confirmed we have a hedgehog visiting the garden with a 5 second CCTV clip from 4am in the morning of him crossing the garden. We suspect he is going for the tray of bird seed which goes down rapidly! And it explains the opening under the fence that has been mysteriously created. We don't mind him coming as long as he stays away from the bins!
• We also discovered a cat on the CCTV getting on top our bee hive, between it and the shelter roof! It shook the box a bit and knocked the thermometer off, but all the cameras and bees seemed to remain intact, which is a minor miracle. Can't say I'm too happy about this particular event; cats are generally a nuisance to the rest of the wildlife and the lawnmower!
• More to report on the behaviour of bees in their last moments. We tracked down the 3rd bee that has appeared on "hive corner" where two dead bees rest and discovered it went their of its own accord and over the course of 2 hours was finally laid to rest. Extremely intriguing behaviour to see it choose its final moments in the corner where the other (that we know of) departed bees also lie.

There is also good news to report on how our new disabled bees are doing with their indoor care. The smallest and weakest which appeared to die made a slow recovery and appears to continue that recovery with each passing day. She is too small and frail to join our other special care bees, but it's amazing to see her near miraculous discovery. Today for the first time she explored some cut lavender placed in her box and appeared to try taking nectar from it. This is the first time since being in our care that she has made such a large effort to get food of her own accord; and of course it will be the best type for her. We watch with interest. 

And finally, littleBigBee was added to Holly's nest earlier in the week and from the word go they got on charmingly. There appear to be no adverse affects or domestic incidents so far! LBB is very funny - he warms up in the nestbox, feeds a little, then scoots out and zooms around the the outside area; he particularly loves to climb over the roof of the nestbox and check that gravity still works. Which it invariably does.

LittleBigBee and Holly meeting for the first time

Once he is satisfied that the outside world is more-or-less still outside and still as he left it, he heads straight back into the nestbox with great purpose and shoots round the outside edge back to the "warm end" (lit with infra red). He repeated this route as a matter of course, but lately has started shortcutting his exit from the box and has now entirely created his own one way system in and out of the nest box ; all highly enteraining, if strictly unnecessary. It is unlikely to be down to health and safety given the way he behaves on the roof, which would put any of Matt Allwright's Rogue Traders to shame. 

Our delight is that he is habiting both worlds - going to rest and sleep and groom inside the nestbox and coming out of it at other times to - well, whatever it is he does, which is run round the whole area, climb everything there is to be climb, drink everything there is to be drunk. He is very much a boy. This is unlike BLB who after a few days came out of the nestbox and never really bothered to go back in it. It seems, however, that LBB has figured out the relationship between the environments we have created and his natural instincts in the wild. Obviously we are thrilled with this. 

Turns out it's a "Tree"

It was a beautiful day today, so we spent some time in the garden working on the laptops near to our pots. We had lots of bees getting busy on the Lavender and Hebe. We saw some very small bees with bright yellow stripes and a reddy coloured bottom. 

We checked the identification guide and they turned out to be the Early Bumblebee (Bombus Pratorum) - the first we have seen! We saw some too with the missing mid-band, just as described in the guide. 

Early Bumblebee (Bombus Pratorum) - Female Worker with missing band on Hebe

We also came to the conclusion the other smaller bees we had been seeing the with ginger "lifejackets" (as BCW calls them) were actually more likely the Tree Bumblebee (Bombus Hypnorum) rather than the Common Carder we thought they were (Bombus Pascuorum). The difference is mainly in the abdomen - the Carder has more of a ginger covering, whereas the Tree Bumblebee has a black abdomen. We'll try to get some photos over the next few days in order to confirm for definite.

The Tree Bumblebee is a recent addition to this country, so it's lovely to see them in our garden enjoying the plants so much!