Pecking Order

We've not said a lot about the Queen we have indoors - she's been with us 4 days now (found Monday 30th April) when we discovered her bedraggled in the garden, unable to fly. 

She's got a problem with her wings; in fact, they seem as though they haven't inflated properly and become large and rigid enough, and consequently she can't generate the lift needed no matter how hard she flaps. We're still not 100% sure, we keep expecting her to take off at some point, but we've tried allowing her to do so numerous times and it just doesn't happen. 

Consequently we've kept her indoors and fed her. She has fed fine on honey water and loves the Kapok we provided - burrowing deep down with ease, often disappearing from sight altogether!

Where's she gone? :)Up till now we have kept our two worker bumbles and the queen separate as we weren't really sure how it would work out putting them together, or indeed what we should do with the queen long term. We've sought additional expert advice, and the best suggestion is that the kindest thing to do is actually keep our queen alive (she will perish outdoors) and take the opportunity to study her behaviour.

a clearer view of our queen's imperfect wingsIn fact, her behaviour has been a mild source of concern as she has basically spent a good deal of her time buried in the Kapok, very still. Not that there is a lot to do, of course, but it's kind of worrying to see her so inactive. So, we took a calculated decision to introduce the workers to the same space as her to see whether as a small community it would have a beneficial effect.

We ensured that we had a backout plan and introduced them together late this afternoon. Well, the good news is there was no fighting! 

Actually the behaviour has been rather intriguing as we watch for subtle cues of their interaction.

The first reponse seemed to be that our two workers were interested in the queen and kept going over to her to explore. She was a bit annoyed by this - and has given then warning signs, as well as nudged them out of the way, and the occasional kick. Lucky, the smallest, was most interested. In general the Queen was ignoring them except when they came to her. 

That broad pattern has continued, however, at times the queen has now pro-actively followed the workers. She shows signs of exerting her dominance by nudging them, possibly biting at them a little (legs/side) - though that's hard to tell. But what is obvious, is she stands right over them and engulfs them with her whole body (see video). She does not appear to harm them in any way, but it's a real apparent show of dominance/submission and quite intriguing. 

Even more remarkable, however, is the behaviour of the workers, because every so often - lucky in particularly - approaches the queen and actually walks right under her, assuming the same position as described above. So, this appears like a deliberate show of submission to the Queen, which I certainly never expected.

All throughout this there is a certain sense that the queen is a bit agitated by the attention. We have to remember, of course, that these bumbles are sisters, not mother daughter, and I wouldn't doubt for a minutes that they could tell the difference in smell. Perhaps our queen has to work up to producing the pheremones that her mother would normally produce to help control her offspring; and we know that behavioural dominance is a key part of the dynamic in the ordinary nest. (see my reference papers). Of course, there are mechanisms, such as smell for cuckoo bumblebees to take over the dominant role in the nest, so we know it can happen - and perhaps we are seeing some of that here. 

The other thing that has become immediately noticeable, though we will have to observe for a few days to determine if it is coincidence, is that the workers - Nedine in particular have suddenly shown an interest in the pollen that they have never done so before. Both the workers have spent more time amongst the pollen that is in the corner of the box, seemingly just walking through - but tonight we clearly observed Nedine's mandibles in action, picking at small grains. Has the presence of a queen suddenly triggered an interest in pollen? If so, the effect was within a matter of hours. 

So, we wait a little nervously for this first night, hoping all will be intact in the morning - remembering back to when we introduced our workers and boy last year and he created chaos in the nest!

A new Queen line-up

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:

• 11/10/2011 8
• 12/10/2011 10
• 13/10/2011 5
• 14/10/2011 21
• 15/10/2011 12
• 16/10/2011 17
• 17/10/2011 22
• 18/10/2011 21
• 19/10/2011 46

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. 

7 hours to make a bed: inspiring

The dynamic in our nest is definitely changing. 

With each passing day there seem to be fewer queens. We can be certain this is one still in there; and she is collecting pollen. They may be another, I'm not totally sure. They seem to have a habit of coming and going all day long and then mysteriously not returning without me being able to pinpoint exactly when. (This is really down to the limited time I have to be able to scour the CCTV).

Also, we definitely have more smaller bees, that weren't there at all about a week ago. Two emerged and sadly died within about 12 hours, they weren't properly formed: one was completely missing wings. But that gave us a hunch that new births were occuring, and also that they were not being very successful. 

I put this down to temperature so I resolved to help get the nest up to the requisite 30 degrees. 

Over the last few days we have seen an increasing ratio of smaller bees - perhaps one or two in place of one or two queens that no longer seem to be around. But the difference in relative activity and size is noticeable.

So, this adds yet more weight to the idea that new bees are being hatched. 

We can't fully tell whether these new bumbles are workers or males. What we can tell is we definitely have a worker or two: there's definitely some "partrolling" going on around the nest (frequent tours of the perimeter), occasional checking of the entrance and then there's what happened with the bedding...

Homemaking instinct

So, the bedding...

I was concerned based on general properties of the lodge, its location (shady), state of the nest (damaged internally) that there was no way a queen could be getting her brood up to 30 degrees. The two sick bees that emerged and died shortly after were not well formed - a classic sign of too-cold-a nest.  So I took a two-pronged attack to helping get the warmth of the nest up. 

The first of these was to install some infra-red lighting directly underneath the lodge. Ideally I would have liked to have it inside the nest, but logistically this was too much of a challenge due to space, wiring and control/monitoring - there would a risk of making things too hot and I would need to be able to monitor that and respond accordingly. This also means being able to do so remotely while away from home and I've not yet had time to devise a system for doing so (though it would be possible, as I now have remote power control over IP and remote telephone control to reboot the broadband router). So, outside installation was the realistic option. 

Since the IR is outside the wooden lodge I can safely leave it on permanently as it will not be making huge impact 

The second prong of the strategy was to add some bedding material to the nest. This is what we did for queens back in March when we were trying to encourage them to choose our site for nesting and we had loads of hamster bedding left over.  We know it's not their first choice compared to moss from our own observations, but we also know they are safe working with it and don't get tangled up. 

So, last night we put two bundles of it in the nest, in the corners (not over the centre where the actual activity was taking, as we didn't want to cause excessive stress or get any honey from honey pots soaked up). You can see in the picture below how we just tucked it into the corners to minimise stress to the bees and make sure we didn't get it any of their honey etc. We know that they can organise the bedding as they see fit. What we didn't was quite what they were going to do!

the bedding we added, just tucked into the corners initially

So, before I go into what was done, have a look at the final effect. We've taken this picture almost exactly 24 hours later. 

how the bedding was re-arranged by one bee over the course of 7 hours

What an amazing change! The bedding has been drawn into a dome over the centre of the nest; drawn away from the corners and tidied into a single mass. 

All this work has been done by a single bumblebee worker, working tirelessly through the night. 

You have to bear in mind that throughout the the night the nest is pitch black for the bee; it is mainly working by feel. It doesn't have any tools, it weighs less than a gram, but by cleverly weaving a repetitive path through the bedding. And this was done by one worker bee taking on what I call the "Nest fixing" role. Over the course of about 7 hours it put in about 4 hours solid work, stopping occasionally for a drink, and weaved its way through the bedding, tugging and pushing to create this new structure. Frankly, I find it totally astonishing.

I took a video of its activity at 32x speed to show what it did through the night to create this masterpiece:

 You can see she works tirelessly all through the night, alone, to re-arrange the bedding. During the day there is little activity like this and it starts again at night time - my theory is that as the day cools the bees are triggered to make sure the nest is providing warmth and insulation. 

What I also find remarkable is how the bees take on a role when the need arises. We hadn't seen much of this individual until we added the bedding; but then she sprung into action, took on this role to assemble the nest structure, and worked tirelessly through the night to do so. I find it all rather inspiring. 

Lifting the Lid on things

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!