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 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!
We've now got to the point where our CCTV DVR system has been tweaked with all the motion detection and camera angles that we can fairly quickly run through our footage and look for interesting activity. Over the next few postings I'll post a few of the videos we have found that have caught our attention.
Today's is just a funny little clip. BCW actually spotted this as it happened - a bee flew in and instead of flying into the entrance, just flew straight into the box and fell the ground! It then seemed to buzz off into the nearby lavender to recover! The clip below is in slow motion so you can see what happens more easily.
It's not actually the only instance - we've seen this happen at least one other time. We don't really have an explanation other than a last minute brake failure!
We thought it was about time to pay a visit to the field over the road where we had spent so long trying to catch queens and where our own brood of bees is now feasting on broad-bean pollen. We thought there might have been a couple of nests there too which we wanted to check out for activity. We couldn't see anything at the supposed nest locations - we might have been unlucky with our timing - or maybe the colonies didn't survive.
Nor could we see much activity in the broad bean field - we were hoping to see some of our own bees. So, it was all seeming a bit fruitless...
That was until we starting walking along the ditch where I had been catching queen bees earlier in the season. I coudn't believe how many queen bees we were seeing, working their way along the moss and poking their noses into it. The only explanation for this was that they were Cuckoo bees looking for nests to infiltrate, as all regular queens will have nested by now.
Sure enough, we checked a few of them out and they were cuckoo bees (Bufftail and Redtail). We saw a few workers too (bufftail & carder) mooching about near the moss and hoped to be led to a nest somewhere, but it was not to be; most of them shot off without us being able to follow them.
The other striking thing was how massive the queens looked! The cuckoo bees seems to be a bit longer than average anyway, but of course we are now used to looking at our small workers and tiny wee Holly, so that has distorted our perception. Can't believe only a few weeks ago we were trying to catch these huge beasts!
As we wandered along the embankment we suddenly spotted this:
We did a bit of research afterwards and concluded it was two bees fighting each other (not mating). At least of them (the one resting at the end of the video) is a cuckoo bee (vestal cuckoo) - an imitation of a Bufftail bumble bee. We are not 100% sure about the smaller one - whether it is a queen or a worker; but they are definitely fighting. We can't know whether the cuckoo was prevented from entering a nest or forcibly ejected.
From what we can tell it's fairly uncommon for them to fight outside of the nest (or at least be seen doing so ). Fights are reported to happen over the nest site itself between regular queens, who will in fact fight to the death; presumably this happens in the nest site itself when one tries to take over.
It's not unreasonable to think something similar would happen with cuckoo bees. Although they themselves are reported to cohabit with a host queen (as well as in some cases attempt to kill the host), they are also potentially subject to attack and fight to the death.
I spent some time last night trying to capture some macro shots of Holly in amongst the moss to demonstrate how good her camouflage is. When I looked at her this morning I'm sure her stripy bands were more dull! BCW agreed and had observed the same thing independently.
This is not the first time we have felt the vibrancy of her markings has changed - previously we had been attributing it to a poor state of health and possibly low nutrition. However, the fact it appears to have changed overnight while she is, basically, in a well-fed state sheds a new light on things and generates a whole series of thoughts:
Do the bands naturally vary in colour over time?
Is there a periodicity to this (e.g. daily)
Is it driven by other factors, such as levels of light, state of nutrition/health etc.?
As far as I'm concerned, these are intriguing questions; and given there seems to be little research done about the camouflage aspects of bee bandings, I suspect they are unanswered. I may be able to devise some experiments and measures to try and answer some of these questions.
