HMS Bombus sets sail

Our first job this morning was to check on the Queen Common Carder we had overnight (BB25). BCW had nicknamed her HMS Bombus because on the infrared it looked like she had a lifejacket/life-ring on. As I've said before, we're easily amused. When we checked on her at 9am she had barely moved from her position overnight. 

BB25 buried down asleepOver the next 50 minutes she stirred and stretched a little and towards the latter end of the period starting moving around the upper-right area of the box as viewed above. She appeared to be stretching and tugging on the fibres. We were, of course, very hopeful this was a demonstration of her "carding" behaviour, from which she gets her name. We like to think that if the queen demonstrates some of her nesting behaviour, then perhaps she is interested in the nest; or perhaps she is testing it out in some way. Here is a video of her cleaning, very kindly right in front of the main camera.

At about 10am she crawled out of the box tube and sat in the new entrance "foyer" we have created, which opens up like a funnel and is surround by grass. The temperature was alread approaching 24 degrees (probably due to reflections from the front wall of our house). She sat here very still for 10 mins and then took off. We watched with baited breath, wondering if this was the last we would see of her. She actually just lifted off by about 30cm and flew into the tall grasses on top of her nestbox and buried deep into the base of the stalks. We could see the grass twitching but not see BB25 herself. 

view of nestbox with BB25 hiding herself away in the grasses!Another 20 minutes passed by while she warmed up in the direct sun and then she took off. She didn't do any substantial circling, which would be used to landmark the location, so we assume that - despite her apparent interest inside the nestbox - she won't be back. So once again we start applying our grey matter to what might and might not have done the trick for her. 

Bees like Buses

We were rudely awoken by the bin-men today and it seems our overnight Bufftail was too. BCW went downstairs to make some coffee and check on our guest and she was starting to stir. Within about half an hour (8.30am) she was up and away. It was threatening (and turned out) to be a beautiful hot day, so who can blame her. 

My plan was to make some box modifications, which I did and will cover in another post, including the rationale. 

I decided to go out at about 2pm to see if I could locate another Queen - having a resident bee, if only for a night, is rather addictive. And, if we are to house a colony, time is of the essence as most Queens will have managed to find a nest by now. The exception is likely to be the Carder Bees, which emerge a bit later from hibernation; we are now starting to see more Carders and fewer of the others (showing nesting behaviour).

I'd been out for about 45 minutes and was returning home along a ditch embankment when I was rewarded with a Carder Bee searching for a nest site. I threw myself into the ditch with wild abandon as we have never yet managed to catch a carder and I was determined to have a good crack at this one. I was successful. (BB24)

BB24 - Common Carder - if only the iPhone did macro photography properly!

I brought her home and we decided to try her in the front nestbox, mainly because it is the best equipped with video. Carders are supposedly less fussy about the exact nature of the nest-site too, so we felt we might be able to get away with it at the front (non-garden) site. 

She went into the box pretty happpily and did not show any frantic signs of searching to get out. In the end she stayed about 20 minutes, fairly near the entrance, then crawled up the tube and took off. Nothing special with her take off at all, no navigational circling or anything. This was pretty much as we expected, especially trying to introduce her to the box at that time of day - we didn't realistically imagine she would stay.

We then left it till 6pm-ish to go out to find another bee that we might get to stay the night. This time BCW found another Common Carder (BB25) and was able to catch her - two in one day! It goes to show how they are increasing in activity at the moment. BB25 is very vibrant in her gingery colour. 

BB25 - common carder - again, iPhone #fail on the focussing!By this time I had made some significant external modifications to both boxes - basically to add internal and external tubing (to simulate crawling underground) and a new "docking" arrangement for our collection pot. This would allow the bee to more easily be directed into the box and for it to experience a 15-20cm crawl into the box through a dark tube - more like crawling underground.

BB25 was very obliging too, going quickly into the box. The newly installed inner tube leads the bee slightly to the right and she tottered off in that direction, right into good view of the infra-red camera. She poked around a little from side to side, as if to establish the basic width of the space, but not as if she was looking for the entrance/exit again. Then she burrowed a little under the bedding, before picking a spot where she stuck her head down into the bedding and basically went to sleep.

We watched fairly closely for about 90 minutes, as it was still light and warm outside (about 18 degrees) and we felt she still might leave. Every so often she moved up and down a little, adjusted a little, but then rested still again. Part of this activity, including some up-and-down repetitions with her abdomen, could be related to her "breathing" which is thought to occur in bursts every 20-30 minutes.  

BB25 bedded down for the night, face first!The redtails got a look-in too

It wasn't all a "Carder" day. While out looking in the evening the first bee I spotted was a redtail queen. I followed it under some trees and it darted into a hole in the mud. I thought I could easily catch her there and that she was definitely in the right place to be hunting for a nest site. After 30 seconds when she hadn't come out of the hole I began to think maybe this was a nest site. Then when I saw a baby worker bee emerging from the hole, I knew we had found a nest. (And by the way, that baby worker was so cute!)

Redtail nest site - hole under some treesThe hole is in some dried out mud under some trees and about 3 inches in diameter. I'm actually quite intrigued to understand how the hole got there and what it's like underground; wishing I had an endoscopic camera!  This is exciting because it means even if we don't get any nesting in our own nestboxes, within 60 seconds of the house we'll be able to observe the comings and goings of this nest. 

At the time BCW was catching her Carder Bee, I was heading to meet her having found nothing, and then quite unexpectedly saw a redtail bumbling around in the long grass; I couldn't believe my luck, thinking we might have two bees staying the night, and I was able to catch her quite easily. As soon as I had done so I was quite suspicious. She was a bit longer than the redtail bumbles we have caught and her tail had less hair. She basically looked longer and more scrawny. And, although her legs were hard to examine properly through my glass pot, they didn't seem to have the long hairs on them. I came to the conclusion she was a cuckoo bee. 

 BB26 - redtail cuckoo beeBCW agreed with me; you can see from the picture the general lack of hairiness that is associated with 'regular' bumblebees; and look at those crazy long legs! - she basically seems like a poor copy. It's good that we are both developing our identification skills, as we do not want to introduce a cuckoo bee to our nest to find she comes back later and destroys a developing colony. So, with a certain sense of achievement, we let her go.

A NewTube Phenomenon (Part 2)

After "losing" the two previous redtails during the night we decided we would persevere with our "new tube" strategy today, but avoid sealing the bees in from now on (even for a short time). It was a hot day again today so we left our hunting until later in the evening. BCW had been unsuccessful, but as I was on the way out to meet her I decided to wander along the ditch at the side of the field, just to try a slightly new tactic. 

As per usual I was giving up hope having only seen one bee zooming across the field on the way home. At that moment I saw a bufftail nest hunting in the embankment and I was able to catch her!

We have learnt that we now have to be looking out for Cuckoo bees and make sure we get a proper Queen, so I was very careful to try and examine her. I also took a photo so that I could check after the fact too.

 Bb23 - bufftail; small and cuteWe are pretty confident this is the real deal and not a cuckloo bee. The band across the abdomen is an indicator and it looks as though the legs are correct: i.e. long hairs on the upper parts with a smoother "pollen basket". In contrast the cuckoos have more-uniform, shorter hairs on their legs, because they don't carry pollen. 

Our strategy for introduction to the nest box is the same as before: using the pot directly against the entrance until the bumble climbs in. However, instead of leaving it at that, our latest technique is to add a length of tubing (about 10 cm) into the entrance (on the outside). We have proven the bees can get down this tube ok. The reasoning behind this technique is to try and trick the bee into thinking it is going further underground than it is. Some suggestions we have seen say the tube should be inside the box, but we have avoided this for the sake of our cameras, so it's a bit of a compromise. Also, of course, our bee will only get to experience the tube on the way our, rather than on the way in: so we don't know if it will have any useful effect.  

We also made another adjustment tonight, which was to tape a pen-lid full of honey-water inside the box. I wanted to see if having access to some sustenance would encourage BB23 to stay longer and whether she would even bother to try drinking from it. 

She took about 15 - 20 minutes to go into the box and, unlike many of the other bees, headed straight for the back upper corner of the box, near where I had put the honey-water. In fact, she seemed to pause over this momentarily, maybe she did actually take a drink. Rather frustratingly she settled somewhere higher up in the box, behind camera 2, where there is no visual coverage! Just our luck. But we could hear a bit of scratching on and off and she was very placid.

Within about 30 minutes she'd stopped making any noise, so to the best of our knowledge she is still in the box! (The advantage of box 1 with the two cameras is that the entrance is much better covered and it would be hard for her to leave without us getting visual confirmation. This is a good thing as in low light the end of the new tube is hard to see, since we have disguised it within some grass.)

The difference in behaviour is quite different to what we saw when the entrance is sealed, and it is immediate. That is to say, it's not as if the bee tries to find the exit then satisfies herself it's unblocked, but just seems to immediately know this is the case; almost instinctively.  At this stage we can only surmise that the levels of light (even if low) and perhaps slightly cool air coming through the tube are sufficiently detectable and relevant to her. 

BB23 has also shown a different behaviour to other bees introduced to an unblocked box, in that she has gone much further from the entrance, rather than staying very close to it. Only tomorrow will tell if this means anything significant. Meanwhile we hope she is having a lovely slumber. 

A NewTube phenomenon (part 1)

Well, you can't rest when it comes to bee conservation! I didn't have time to report yesterday, so  there is a bit more to write today, and it's been a very interesting two days with some significant new learning; so it's in two parts. 

Starting with yesterday; we managed to each catch a redtail bumblebee within about 30 minutes of each other. (Am I now officially a Junior BCW?) It had been a hot day, possibly hottest of the year, about 10 degrees above the normal average so we left it later to go hunting. It's funny how the bee searching goes: we're not seeing as many now (except for cuckoo bees emerging) and I get a bit disheartened that we've run out of time to find a queen that hasn't nested yet.

And then, usually when we've given up and are walking home we'll see one random bee, probably thinking the same as us, just giving up and going home! And we pounce. This strategy works on several levels (in our heads, at least):

1. if we bring them to the box earlier in the day, there's a greater chance they will just leave immediately and carry on their daily business
2. we are genuinely trying to be as kind as possible to the bee - so if it is near to the time when it needs to bed down safely, we are offering excellent overnight accomodation!

Anyway, I digress. Prior to catching the redtails (BB21 & BB22) we had agreed on a new strategy. For a second day we were going to seal the entrance for a few hours to see if they would stay in the box longer; but we were going to add about 10cm of tubing to the entrance to simulate "going underground", hoping this might be more of a convincer. We were also going to unseal the pipe after dark, assuming the bee would be asleep, cover it in a bit of grass (such that the bee could burrow out if necessary) and see whether this made any difference to behaviour the next day. So, that's what we did.

The behaviour we observed was both new and fascinating and, interestingly pretty much identical for both bees.

Unlike the cuckoo bee of the day before, when these two red tails were introduced to the box they were darting around the box, clearly looking for the exit which we had sealed. Of course, we can never know whether a bumblebee feels truly "anxious" or whether it is simply following a pre-programmed reaction - it's own system of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (assuring security). Of course, we don't deliberately want to stress the bee, so if we felt it was excessive and entirely undue we would let the bee go. However, we know that the bees do settle down and also it is not our default strategy to seal the box; we were doing it specifically as a piece of learning. 

It was fascinating to be able to compare two redtails simultaneously. The bee in the front box searched the box, but then calmed down relatively quickly and just mooched around a bit. In contrast the bee in the back nestbox (essentially in identical conditions) was far more active and feisty, with a lot more buzzing for a lot longer. Within about an hour they were both fairly still and quiet and we assumed they were going to sleep as BB20 had done the night before. 

By this time is was dark, although fairly warm at 16 degrees ambient temperature (presumably much more inside the box) so we carried out the next part of our plan which was to unblock the tube in the entrance and semi-seal it with grass. We did this at about 45 minute intervals, but in both cases we were amazed to see the redtail emerge within about 30 seconds of us doing so, even in the darkness.  We confirmed they were safe; in the case of the front box she wandered along the outside of the tube and then into the grass around the box. 

I was happy this was sufficient for the bee to be safe overnight given past observations, having seen them sleep under the box roof and under a heather pot! So, we let them bee! There was no sign of them in the morning.

We were both astounded by this behaviour having not seen it before, so I think we take away a few learning points from this:

• the bees do get agitated when the box is sealed and (from other observations) it seems to be the case they instantly know whether the box is sealed or not - we are still figuring out how they do
• the vestal cuckoo bee from the night before was placid and just quietly went to sleep, unlike these two redtails. Perhaps that is a difference between the bee types: it makes sense that the cuckoo bee would be quiet and stealthy and hang around to see what goes on inside the box. In contrast, the proper queens are more concerned to find a safe location
• if the bee is not happy with its location it will even be prepared to come out into the dark to get 'safe' (whatever that means in bee world)

Needless to say, we are not planning to seal the box again - the experiment is over and showed that it offers no benefit in terms of encouraging the bee to stay (arguably the opposite). We can't of course comment on the success or otherwise of the new tubing, other than we can confirm that the bees can traverse it safely. 

Into the Unknown

The day started with great anticipation, coming down early to see what BB19 was upto. At about 8.45am we heard a bit of scratching and very low dull buzzes. This continued in small bursts for about 30 minutes. Then we went silent for an hour. By this time BCW had to stop observing the camera.

By the time BCW came back, BB19 had gone! It's pretty much what we expected. We had unblocked the nest and just loosely filled the entrance with grass during the night, so that BB19 was free to burrow out when she wanted. Aside from being the kindest thing for her, we hoped that the grass in the entrance would "explain" why the box seemed blocked the night before. Of course, this might be way beyond the average comprehension or memory of a bee, but we don't really know :-) Also, she'd get the sense that the nest entrance was fairly secure, which might be encouraging to her. Anyway, she buzzed off and hasn't been seen today!

It was a very warm day today, so we were able to leave it later to go out bee-hunting. BCW had discovered a new spot with lots of Carder bees, although they were foraging for pollen high up in some tree blossom, so not suitable for catching. However, it is a new location to add to our catchment area. As we were heading there she spotted a bumble (BB20) .diving down into the nearby grass and, of course, being a bee-catching-wizard she managed to catch it in the pot. It was about 6.30pm 15 degrees or so, so a good time to be bedding down. 

BB20 - unrecognised species at time of writing 

We didn't really recognise the bee so were a bit concerned it was a cuckoo bee - but we just couldn't be sure. One of the confusing elements is the 3 apparent stripes on the tail: Buff, White and Buff. She is quite long and thin rather than plump. And we couldn't be 100% sure she had pollen baskets on her back legs. In the interests of time we decided I would take the bee anyway and try and nest her while BCW carried on looking. I brought her to the front box; she was placid on the walk home but more agitated when I tried to nest her. In the end she took 30 minutes to go into the box, which must have been quite tiring. 

Once she went into the nestbox she was very calm. She didn't do burrowing or cleaning behaviour but just did a few revolutions of the box. She didn't even appear to try and find an exit (unlike BB19 last night). After less than 5 minutes she just bedded down on top of the bedding at the far end of the box and went to sleep in full view! 

BB20 in dreamland!

We've looked at the identification sheet from the bumblebee conservation trust and can't find one that matches tonight's guest; so that's something we need to follow up. 

UPDATE:

using the guide from the natural history museum (see our Bee Links) we are confident this is in fact a Vestal Cuckoo bee - i.e. a Bufftail Mimic that would try to take over a genuine bufftail nest. Obviously there is no way she would stay in an unoccupied box. Nor do we want her hanging around to do so! We