Solitary bee evictions & activity
Today the temperature rose in the sunlight to 15°C, so I was tempted to go and check the bee box. There’s an awful lot to say… but I will have to update later. The key thing is what resulted, the first photograph may say so much, although I will supply some words.
I generally like snow. Out here in the countryside, the fresh snow can show up the tracks of wild animals that live around the village. I also like it because I can throw snowballs – I make no apologies about that (well, sometimes). However this year snow was late, not thick enough to throw at anyone, and in the context of my little ecology project, it was very unwelcome. I never thought I would feel this way about snow.
Today’s sunlight and 15°C temperature nevertheless inspired me; to place the bee that had been sitting for several days on top of the box indoors into the sunlight. As his blood warmed, he became more active – grooming and strutting – then flew off. I was glad that another had launched at last; 7 in total of this years ‘swarm’!
As I knew that more had emerged out of their tubes and had crawled back between the stack tubes, I decided to take all the tubes out to see if I could ‘liberate’ them also. I found one moving, but three more apparently dead (their legs were tucked rigidly into their body). I placed them into a tray in my study where I stored other dead insect specimens (wasps, beetles etc.). I gave the live one his moment in the sun, but the clouds rolled over intermittently, and he couldn’t do much more.
With more dead bees, a mild panic kicked in. What if others trying to emerge from the cocoons were dying from a combination of the cold and their efforts to free themselves? So after laying out the forty-odd tubes in the sun, I decided that I would one-by-one liberate/clear all the cocoons from the tubes, just like I had done the previous year.
I set about delicately scrape away the mud plugs, clean out with cotton buds the debris (mainly the larvae-phase dried poop) and in some delicate fashion or another where ever possible, tease or push out the cocoons. In about five cases the cocoons were firmly stuck in place, or the white tufts were already poking out, so I put them aside, judging it not worth risk. I also counted the full cocoons, empty shells, emerged but blocked bees and even which ones had buzzed at me, to see if my earlier cocoon count had been accurate [I will later fill out a spread sheet to compare and verify these details].
The result of my efforts is shown in the first photo – 48 cocoons extracted, 2 bees crawling (including the one that didn’t fly + and one that came back to life); 4 listless but just moving, 4 partially emerged from fully extracted cocoons + two emerging left in tubes and 12 full cocoons left in trimmed tubes that were too attached to risk moving.
There were also 21 cocoons found empty. Of those seven known to have flown, three found dead, the two crawling around and 4 relatively listless. I also counted what seemed to be the remnants of four bees in the open cocoons as if they died or were eaten by a parasite. In fact I did also discover one tube that had several maggots all over the cocoon less tube. Thus my initial estimate of up to 89 solitary bee cocoons, was fairly accurate – my maths says I have 87.
Two last footnotes to the day – with one panic subsided I realised that I didn’t want to risk exposing the cocoons to further low temperature. Without any perspex box, I looked round for a something I could contain the emergences in; I found a cake plateau that had a transparent dome cover – the perfect solution! It had enough room for them to walk around in but not fly off, and something that I could put in the darkness of the spare room which wasn’t locally heated, but which never drops below 12 degrees.
I also cleaned out the empty tubes, reinserted them into the wooden box, and that now sits above the outside door, finally ready for this years’ activities. According to the weather predictions, another weeks wait is in order.
Tags: Cocoons, solitary bees
December 4th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[...] the paper straws which contained my over-flow of cocoons (once the main box had been filled up). Curiosity is not always risk free, but it is compelling. I thought I would look through them by cutting the outer binding selotape [...]