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Bumble bee nest box (1 Viewer)

recently I purchased a bumble bee box of ebay I was surprised to find two weeks later a bee going in and out.Can any one tell me if the nest will get to big and have to be moved as we only have a small garden.
 
wildliferon said:
recently I purchased a bumble bee box of ebay I was surprised to find two weeks later a bee going in and out.Can any one tell me if the nest will get to big and have to be moved as we only have a small garden.
Most bumblebee colonies only reach a couple of hundred individuals,some only a few tens, either way they are all very mild mannered.
Last year a small colony of red tailed bumblebees(Bombus lapidarius)set up under the concrete block supporting our rotary washing line, whenever we hung our washing out we would stand in their flightpath with our bare legs inches from the hole, the bees would queue patiently in the air, waiting for us to move,we actually missed their company when they eventually dissapated in the autumn.

Colin.
 
wildliferon said:
recently I purchased a bumble bee box of ebay I was surprised to find two weeks later a bee going in and out.Can any one tell me if the nest will get to big and have to be moved as we only have a small garden.

Bumblebees usually only make a small nest and although several hundred bees may be raised in it during the breeding season the short life of the workers and the loss of many others through predation, accidental death etc, tends to keep the numbers servicing the colony at any one time, fairly small.

Once a colony has become established, moving a nestbox to a different site, even only a few feet away will possibly lead to the early demise of the colony, as those workers who are away from the nest at the time it is moved will be unable to locate it in it's new location.

Bumblebees like Honeybees make a small orienting flight every time they leave the nest to establish it's position. A few years ago I was studying a colony which had established an underground nest on a roadside verge. One day the Council mowed the verge, and the entrance was obscured by grass cuttings. Bees returning from foraging formed a small swarm in the immediate vicinity of the nest hole but couldn't locate the entrance hole. I cleared the immediate area of cuttings and exposed the entrance and eventually the bees found it.

This demonstrates the bees ability to return to a nest site with great accuracy, it was only the sudden change of the surroundings of the nest that confused them. On their next forray they all made the orienting flight and later when they returned, they had no difficulty at all in locating the entrance.

Don't worry about having a small garden, marked bumblebees have been found foraging over half a mile from the nest site and have sucessfully returned to the nest.

Enjoy your Bumblebee nest box, but don't get too disappointed if it is not a complete success, a great many nests fail for various reasons.

Harry
 
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