> simulating a hurricane by putting fans around the
> bathtub and studying the effect on a fleet of toy boats?
Reading that excellent summation forced me to wipe coffee off my screen!
Seriously though, I looked at the paper and supplement, and found the
nestbox size to be a factor that could well be the sole reason why the
colonies failed:
"a wooden nest box (28 × 16 × 11 cm): the rear chamber containing the
brood (henceforth the ‘brood chamber’) and a front chamber housing
a gravity feeder containing sucrose solution and a pollen dish."
28 × 16 × 11 cm (11" x 6" x 4") seems smallish for US bumblebees, but I know
nothing of the European species.
I think that these may have been "standard Koppert bumblebee pollination
boxes". They are intended as "disposable" pollination units, cruelly
designed to ignore the issue of long-term survival of the bumblebees once
pollination is complete.
They don’t say what the size of the "from room" and the "brood chamber" was.
If you think about a natural bumblebee nest, they would rarely have separate
"front" and "back" rooms, so really all that is needed is something to
prevent drafts, like a sink-type p-trap in the tubing to the surface, to
trap the cold air, and prevent it from seeping into the brood area.
This is a very fancy approach to draft control - an actual "door" that
bumbles apparently learn how to shoulder open! I've never had the guts to
try this myself, as I like the simplicity of a "p-trap" with no moving
parts:
http://www.das-hummelhaus.de/Bilder%20Nistkastenbeschreibung/Klappenmuster%2
0Bild%203.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/nxnajcd
If we assume that the "front room" was only 3 inches deep, this would leave
only an 8" x 6" area for raising brood and storing food. A bumblebee "cup"
is about the size of your thumb, so this seems to have been a serious limit
on colony population size:
In contrast, here's a photo ripped from today's news (from Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, one of my regular haunts):
http://www.thestar.com.my/~/media/Images/TSOL/Photos-Gallery/Nation/2013/11/
10/main_jz_1011_p28a_R.ashx
http://tinyurl.com/lnndu5h
Now THAT’S a decent generous brood chamber - at least 12" x 24" x 4", and
likely with a "parlor" of at least another 4 inches at the left end off
camera. Look how many cups in which larvae are reared. It should be
obvious that a bigger box means a bigger colony of bumble bees, and a bigger
colony can survive more casualties than a small one. Bumblebee colonies
that survive summer tend to number at least 40 to 50 workers in my
experience, but again, my experience is limited to the East coast of the
USA.
That said, I've seen bumblebees thrive in a simple 2-gallon flower pot with
the bottom hole plugged, set on a wooden base with an entrance notch. As
Pooh himself said so wisely: “You Can Never Tell With Bees”.
> And are you going to post the design of these boxes
> so that more of us can play this game? Here in the
> UK bumble bee nests seem to be a favourite food of badgers.
Badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom...
While any box with a good seal can avoid damp, and hence mushrooms, badgers
may be the reason why concrete nestboxes are offered:
http://www.manufactum.com/wood-concrete-bumblebee-nesting-box-p1466144/
http://tinyurl.com/l5qacwq
My own "designs" are nothing more than nested plastic clothing storage boxes
from with foam insulation between them, and tubing attached using PVC
screw-on fittings to form a water-tight seal to the walls of the inner and
outer plastic containers.
But if badgers were a concern, I would buy one large and one smaller plastic
storage bin, and pour concrete between them to create a very critter-proof
Bumblebee Bunker®. You'd want to put insulation board around the inner box
before pouring the concrete, as direct contact concrete will suck the warmth
right out of the nest. Go sit on a concrete bench in winter for an hour
someday, and you'll see.
But here is a large collection of different approaches to the issue of
providing housing for bumblebees. It is mostly in German, so use Google
translate:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1
<http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&pr
ev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.hymenoptera.de/ht
ml/gallery/Nisthilfen/einrichtung/&usg=ALkJrhixUV5nuSllv4BtgXBkKM_9orDRswor>
&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.
hymenoptera.de/html/gallery/Nisthilfen/einrichtung/&usg=ALkJrhixUV5nuSllv4Bt
gXBkKM_9orDRswor
or
http://tinyurl.com/mu3n5yg
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
