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.
Here are a few videos introducing our "high dependency" bee, Holly. As you can tell she is very small and disabled with a missing leg and wing. However, this has not stopped her being as active as possible and we have now transferred her to a bigger box with better food supply and bedding. We can tell when she has more energy - she darts around the box more and her colours look brighter. You really can see the difference when she is "off colour".
Her colours, in fact, have inspired some thoughts about camouflage, and I'll be setting up a separate page to document that in due course.
This is a picture of the new box we have created for her
I have made some fake flowers (the 3 green blobs) for her that we now call "flower mountain" (sounds like something out of Disney). (We've also got a "flower tower" now too, not shown on the picture).
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.
One of the things that we read about early on in our project was the fact that bumble bees will memorise their nest the first time they leave it by doing "navigation circles" around it. These are a series of circles of increasing size and distance, where the bee looks at the nest and observes the landmarks around it.
On a few occasions we had queens that we attempted to nest and when they left the nest we thought maybe they had shown this "navigation" behaviour. However, there is nothing like seeing the real thing for sure to know what you are looking at.
I found a great piece of video on the DVR this morning that showed one of our bees in close up coming out of the nest for the first time and spending about 20 seconds up close memorising the entrance. After this, she would have circled at a further distance and height to take in the surroundings properly. (Of course, now she would have the benefit of our "runway" :-) )
So, I already had some iPhone footage attempting to show this circling from a longer distance. So, I've edited the two clips together so you can see what the entire behaviour looks like. It's unmistakable and the behaviour we had seen with earlier queens really did not come close - none of them really memorised the nest entrance like these workers do, even though they circled up to half a dozen times around the nest area.
My own theory is that the circling we saw with the queens was more to do with them getting their own bearings - bearing in mind (no pun intended) that we'd transported them from the nest site they were hunting down, into our own nest box. Quite possibly a confusing process for them. It makes sense they would have to get a handle on their location once exiting our nest box.
Anyway, here's the video...
Although in the close-up segment our worker is out of shot for some of the duration, you can still see her shadow cast on the nestbox itself. She also moves very quickly so appears to dart about rather than move smoothly.
Frankly, I don't see much point in doing something in your own time if there is not going to be an element of fun. This project is combining many skills: science & observation, craft making, environmental awareness, learning, technology & computing, writing, publishing, media and video-making, team-work... and FUN.
The bees themselves are ever so slightly crazy and a true delight to observe - they bring a great sense of joy in their own right and can't help but bring out a bit of the inner child. Remember these are not honeybees with their German-esque precision and rigourously engineered hive-style. These are bumble bees and the name is well deserved. They are the slightly disorganised, slightly ungainly, bumbling cousins - sort of the Boris Johnsons of the bee world. Although, of course, the bees are adorable.
So, in this general spirit of carefree playfulness, today I painted a runway on the lawn up to the hive.
Health and Safety demand we have runway markingsOf course, now that the hive population has grown considerably, the air traffic around the box has increased also, creating more congestion on the flight paths. The Health and Safety inspectorate demands that we move from "cottage industry" to a proper solution for controlling airspace. We'll be getting the radar next week.
Aside from that, we are just having a bit of fun and hopefully educational value. It's possible we'll have some youngsters round to observe the bees and we can use our markings not only to explain the paths our bees are taking to the fields, but also emphasise the do's and don'ts of standing in front of the hive!
Will it affect the bees?
There is the possiblity this will affect the bees, though not in an adverse way. They are known to use visual cues to identify their nest and their location and use landmarks to aid their navigation.
It's also been shown that honey bees can count in a rudimentary way. So, it may well be true that these lines aid the bumblebees with easily locating their nest. For those that have already learnt its location, it's not a problem that these lines have appeared, as they are tolerant to changes and variations - as indeed they need to be in a natural environment where the surroundings are constantly changing.
Have you lost the plot?
Nope. Just expressing creativity. On the other hand, if I find a spaceship in the garden tomorrow morning, I'll panic.
A few people have already commented on how "crazy" this is - but perhaps they just haven't heard their inner child in recent times...
I'm pleased to say over the weekend I pretty much mastered control of livestream.com, which enables us to make live broadcasts from the cameras in the garden. I also ordered a 4-channel Digital Video Recorder from eBay over the weekend, which will allow control, recording and broadcast of 4 cameras simultaneously. I'll leave the full technical details of the set up till a later post.
There was also plenty of activity from the bee hive. They are obviously multiplying in numbers and the unusually warm weather continues. There were still active bees today at 9pm, even though the light has pretty much gone by then! Mind you, with a field full of (we think) broad beans flowering, who can blame them!?
The other main activity was nursing our less-able-bodied little bee, who my neice Chloe has named Holly. Holly is missing a leg and a wing and has a crooked body - which appears to be the result more of a birth defect rather than an injury. And she is so incredible small (and imperfectly formed) it suggests she may have been premature.
After several attempts to put her back in the hive and finding her crawling on the ground outside (and looking increasingly dishevelled) we decided that was a bad thing - she could barely walk and was probably getting trampled inside the nest; and probably having difficulty feeding.
So now, she is in our high dependency ward - an ice cream tub!
Holly's high-dependency ward
She has flowers and moss and honey water and pollen - which is pretty much all she needs. And lots of space. We keep her indoors overnight for warmth but put her back on top of the nest during the day (in her tub). There's not much else we can do except give her the least traumatic life we can, given that she is unable to fulfil her natural role. It gives us a chance to study her too and I have been able to take some macro photographs.
