A big thanks to Dragonfli (Beepol)

I justed wanted to create a public "thank you" and link back to Dragonfli, who have very kindly listed us on their page of interesting customer projects. We're delighted to be considered of interest. ☺

Dragonfli supply the Beepol hive and lodge that forms the main basis of our bumblebee study, research and of course, enjoyment. They are available between March & August - conditions permitting - and a fascinating addition to the garden, with huge scope for learning and education. 

We've modified our lodge by adding cameras, thermometer and various other useful enhancements (e.g. internal measuring chart). You can find all our beepol related articles here. 

Weekend Catchup (1st Beepol Weekend)

Infrastructure

I made some minor infrastructure modifications this weekend. We noticed that the smaller, new bumblebees didn't seem to find the new wax moth flap system on the lodge as easy as we had hoped, despite it being slightly wedged open with blutac. It was easy for them to leave, but on return we noticed that they showed more interest in trying to get into the nest at the lodge lid join (smell?) rather than via the open flap. I have to say, this is slightly baffling when the entrance hole is easily accessible. 

In order to aid memorisation and detection of the entrance, I added some bright yellow tape and blue marking on the entrance flap, in case its transparency was causing an issue:

modifications to lodge entranceWe'll remove the blutac when there is a sufficient in-flow/out-flow of bees that they can learn from and assist each other working the flap. This way we'll slowly train the.

We also noticed that memorisation procedure was also taking in more of our other features in the garden, particularly the nestboxes and associated features. This stands to reason, since we have created that environment to be highly visible and attractive to queens. I wanted to make sure that we didn't inadvertently confuse our new bumbles; for example, into trying to return to one of the other nest boxes. To that end I painted a clear white line upto our lodge. Last year we painted a runway for fun - but since bumeblebees use linear features and markings for navigation, this clearly has a useful function for them. This should ensure that the bumbles are able to return to the lodge reliably, even if they are a little confused by the flap when they get there!

linear navigation feature for beepol lodge

Queen Catching

The weather has been all over the place this weekend - despite being sunny at times it never got above 11C on saturday and about 7C on Sunday. Nonetheless I went out queen hunting, if only to survey activity. 

• Saturday: captured 1 redtail very quickly 15:45 - and placed in pilkington box. She stayed in the capture tube, so much so I put the whole tube in there! Eventually left the box sunday. (QB2012-12)
• Saturday:  captured a second redtail at 16:30 - she was very placid, probably happy to bed down; went in box 1 very quickly and stayed there still all night, eventually leaving 11am Sunday. She did no memorisation so she won't be back. (QB2012-13)
• Sunday: I went out about 13:30. It had been sunny but, of course, as I left started to drizzle, eventually hail! Didn't think I'd find much but caught (and lost) a redtail, saw another redtail and bufftail and then eventually caught a bufftail. She also went into box 1, but I didn't observe her leaving. (QB2012-14)

QB2012-13 Redtail resting overnightOn saturday I noticed a few bumblebees out resting and also looking for places to rest, rather than nest. The one in this photo took quite a while exploring this piece of ground. I couldn't understand why as it is not good nest-location ground, but in the end she settled down just to rest. I was intrigued to see how she aligned herself with the features on the ground, as if to achieve better camouflage. (stripe lined up with the white/brown twig; thorax in the shadow). Coincidence or camouflage? It's an intriguing question, but I have a strong feeling that bumbles can use their markings as camouflage and I'm trying to collect as much evidence of this as possible. 

resting queen - coincidence or camouflage?

Nest Activity

For the first few days of the hive, activity levels inside seemed high but we had very few bees showing any interest in the outside world. I think some of those that did may have been lost, as we've not seen many return - although to be fair at this stage I'm not fully tracking all exits & return trips. 

There's quite a range of sizes in the nest - small workers at under 10mm ranging up to some that appear to be twice the size. We have seen one or two seemingly enormous bees on the internal camera, which I am still trying to get a good picture of, to establish if we might have seen the queen.

Finally today (Sunday 15th April) we've seen much more interest in the outside world, although they have picked a lousy day for it! (about 6C - 7C, rain and hail showers, and very windy) Nontheless, some of the tiny bumbles have been bringing pollen back, the first time we've seen that.  There still appears to be some confusion about finding the entrance hole, even with the flap wedged up, so we'll just have to keep an eye on that and ensure none get "stranded" outside the nest. 

Here's a wee one performing memorisation on her first flight.

performing memorisation during first flight from beepol lodge

Audio Frequencies

This year I've started sampling audio frequencies under certain situations to see if there is any pattern - it's purely exploratory at the moment. We've found a queen buzzing at almost a perfect middle C3 (130Hz). 

We noticed during the night the colony, while still busy is a lot quietier and when accompanied by crackling sounds (hatching) there is a single sustained note (often 30 seconds or more in length, repeatedly), so far measured at 180Hz.

During the hail storm today, the bumblees went crazy! A high pitched synchronised sustained buzz, almost like a scream, at between 400Hz and 500Hz. We'll do our best to capture more data to determine any patterns. 

Removing Beepol Lid - part 2

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PROCEDURE IS INVASIVE ON THE BUMBLEBEE NEST AND CARRIES A HIGH RISK OF STINGING. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NORMAL DOMESTIC ENJOYMENT OF THE BEEPOL NEST

My first attempt to remove the beepol hive plastic lid had been unsuccessful and the lid was left in the nest (loose and unglued), so my immediate concern was to go back in late and night and remove it before it started getting incorporated into the nest structure! (I.e. before the bees started to build wax structures around and on it). 

The plan was simple: under cover of night and red light again, I would open the lodge very quickly, grab the lid and close before the bees really had chance to even come to the front of the lodge. There was going to be no pause to analyse or consider any bumbles on the lid - instead, we would place the lid immediately in a large plastic tub so that we had them contained, and then help get them back into the nest through the entrance.

The operation went very smoothly (as planned this time!) and was done without any harm to the residents. Two actually came out with the lid, trapped in the "one way entrance" chamber. (I'm not a fan of this chamber, we had bees die in here last year also). One of those bumbles turned out to be dead already, the other we coaxed out and onto the ledge. She stood guard for about 10 minutes, probably wondering how she had been miraculously transported from inside the nest to outside, but then found the entrance and went back inside without fuss.

view inside beepol - CH3 improved with lid removedThe view inside the beepol nest (CH2 & CH3) is now vastly improved, just as we had intended. We can clearly and easily see wax pots and lots of busy bees looking after them. 

a hive arrive-o!

Great excitement ensued on Wednesday (10th April) as our Beepol hive arrived from Dragonfli. My parents were staying with me as part of the welcoming party, which perhaps was lucky as it meant I held my breath slightly as the citylink courier swung the hive to his ear and exclaimed 'what you got there? Well b*gger me, it's bees. I coulda been stung', stringing together more words in one go than was probably good for him. I was livid and thought he probably should have been stung: the guy was clueless (and toothless) and had no idea what he'd been transporting or how to care for it, despite jumbo lettering all over the box.

The bees, of course, were going nuts after this, so we left them to calm down in the garage, hoping there was no major nest damage. We have never ever had a decent experience from citylink by the way, and I recommend that you never ever use them.

beepol hive as it arrives in its packaging..

Everything was prepped for installation of the hive into the lodge (CCTV etc.) so we just had to wait. We removed the outer transport packaging and checked the internal nest box. Sadly we discovered a stain seeping through the box - from the colour I guess honey, although a quick check with Dragonfli on twitter and they thought maybe some of the sugar water supply. Either way, NOT GOOD. The bees hate stickiness and I hate the thought of the bees and/or their nest and hard work getting damaged.

the beepol hive itself - with some staining

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PROCEDURE IS INVASIVE ON THE BUMBLEBEE NEST AND CARRIES A HIGH RISK OF STINGING. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NORMAL DOMESTIC ENJOYMENT OF THE BEEPOL NEST

The plan was to site the box during the dark and and then remove the plastic lid that is glued to it. This is not for the faint hearted, as Dragonfli say on their site, there is a significant risk of getting stung! But i'd done it last year without a problem so intended to do it again. The point of this 'unauthorised' modification, by the way, is two fold:
1) removing the plastic lid allows the next to extend in height into the lodge space; allowing the development of more bumblebees and potentially longer lifespan of the colony.
2) we've got multiple cameras in the nest now, one is pointing down, and for the best view we need the plastic removed.

We placed the hive box inside the lodge in our garage, to keep the light down as much as possible and then allowed the bumblebees to settle down again for a few hours. Poor things must have been very stressed by all the day's moving about. Then, under cover of darkness we ventured out to go back into the lodge and remove the plastic lid. We used a red light so that we could see with minimal disturbance to the bumblebees. However, they can of course tell that something is happening by all the vibration and inrush of cold air.

beepol bumblebee "hive" showing the plastic container and lid

Getting the plastic lid off is actually a bit tricky and proved to be moreso than last year. It clips onto the main box the best is in, but it is also glued - so these glue seals need to be broken. Generally a screwdriver will do it, but it took a fair bit of 'levering' this time. Of course, as soon as you do that the bees come rushing and some were starting to force their way out through the lid edge before I'd got it removed (but as the seal was lifting).

I pressed it down and got it to the point I thought it was free and quickly tried to lift it. The idea was to whip it away quickly and shut the lodge before the bees even got a chance to really get far; but this is not how it went.

In fact, one corner of the lid was still glued, so it didn't come away. Meanwhile I'd lifted it and the bees came rushing - all over the lodge perimeter and fizzing like crazy. All over the lid too. One even shot off across the garden, flying in near dark, which amazed me. I thought she'd come for us, but she just flew off. I guess we lost her.

I had to make a snap decision - the lid was covered in bumblebees and I thought if I removed it, I'd have all these bumbles in the garden in the dark and no way to control them or return them to the lodge; so I quickly abandoned the lid and left it in the nest.

However, the drama was not over, as by this stage several bees had dashed outside the lodge, some dropped to the ground and others were on the lodge lip, making it impossible to shut the lodge lid. This was less than ideal.

We knew that the only was to resolve this was pretty much to leave the bees to calm down of their own accord. We captured the ones on the ground using jars/card and placed them on the lodge roof. Of course they were not happy, giving full 'level 4' warning (I.e. aiming sting at you) and one of them even shot its venom at me from a distance. However, in all cases they fairly quickly found their way back into the lodge via the open lid. (which was a relief, as I had no backup plan, other than to trap them in tubs overnight for safe keeping).

We then propped open the lodge lid as another four or so bumbles stood guard on the lip; we just had to wait until they sensed no threat and returned into the nest. So, we went indoors and poured a dram to calm down!

last remaining escapee being encouraged to rejoin the colony

After about 45 mins we returned back outside and, as expected, all four guard bees had gone back into the nest and we could use the infrared camera in the lodge to confirm there were none still on the lip. So, we quickly removed our wedge and shut the lodge with all our bumbles safely back inside (except the one that flew off). The plastic lid, of course, is still inside, loose; so some time very soon I have to go back in a try and grab that out before the bees build round/on it. This will also improve our camera picture which is, of course, part of the reason for doing it.

Notwithstanding, things looked pretty reasonable on the cameras - the ankles and positions were good and despite the transparent plastic lid obscuring some of the view we could definitely see some wax pots filled with honey; and' of course, the sound was unaffected (and loud).

This colony has way more workers than the Beepol we got in August last year (not surprising) so this whole process was more risky and more intense. Last year I managed it myself all in one go with barely a murmur from the few bees in the lodge. And we were able to open it up once every night to check and take pics without the bees even noticing! I think it's different because there are many more bees in this colony at the moment and also it's much colder at night now, so they will notice the lodge being opened.

It was probably a mistake to attempt it all in one go with this many bees - I probably should have cut the lid loose without trying to remove it, and then closed the lodge and let the bees all settle down again. Then gone back in either an hour later or the next evening to remove the lid. That will probably be my preferred strategy going forward.

Linear Features

It was a public holiday in the UK today and despite a bright start, the day never got above 11 degrees C and became cloudy, eventually raining later.

So, there were no bumbles around in the garden but I wanted to slightly re-organise our pots and nest entrances to create a much stronger "linear feature" and tidy up the pots along the edge of the garage so that it creates a stronger line for any queens to follow.  Bumblebees clasically search for nest sites along linear features, and indeed, use them for navigation. You will see bumblebees following the edge of fields, roads and even the white lines on roads!

Here's a picture - it forms an L-shape. 

linear feature for bumblebees with long grass, pots and moss-covered nest entrances

That's it for today!