Taming bumblebees. Growing bumblebees on an industrial scale Bumblebee House

Bumblebees are a genus of Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera) in the bee family. Only about 300 species of them are known in the world.

Species of the genus Bombus, of which there are more than 80, are distributed in almost all parts of the world except Australia.

Where do bumblebees live and how do they create families? The answers to these questions will be given in the article.

Habitats

Where do bumblebees live? It's easier to say where they don't live. Ability to support high temperature her body allowed these insects to live far to the north. Bumblebees penetrate to Greenland, Chukotka, Novaya Zemlya and Alaska. What is the reason for the cold resistance of these insects? Their body has the ability to thermoregulate.

And at the same time, this feature does not allow them to get along in the tropics. Bumblebees live in Eurasia and in mountain areas. Only two species of bumblebee are found in the tropics of Brazil.

Brief characteristics of insects

Bumblebees belong to the Apidae family, just like common honey bees.

In its lifestyle and body structure, this large insect is close to bees. True, the lifestyle and nests are different.

Males, unlike females, have long antennae, they are also larger than working bumblebees and have copulation mites.

Their body is large, reaching a length of 3.5 cm, quite densely covered with hairs. The color combines black, red, white and yellow stripes.

The lower, white one ends with a small, invisible in the normal state, sting. The hind tibiae have spurs.

The bumblebee's eyes are located almost on the same line.

Both the queen and workers have a collecting apparatus. It consists of a brush and a basket.

The queens are larger in size than the males and have a sting, just like the workers (females are underdeveloped).

Bumblebees are friendlier insects; they sting very rarely, compared to bees. ABOUT chemical composition Little is known about bumblebee venom. It has not been studied enough.

Lifestyle, behavior

I wonder where bumblebees live? Bumblebees, like other insects, are almost always active summer time, however, this period is different for all species. This depends on their habitat (high or low latitudes).

A characteristic feature of bumblebees that distinguishes them from other pollinators (wasps and bees) is that they are able to work in the cold (collect nectar), at temperatures down to 0°C. In this regard, they go farther than other pollinators to the north.

Those species that live far in the north, with a short one-month summer, do not have time to create a family and live as solitary insects.

In the territories temperate climate the created family lives for one summer. IN tropical zones some species organize perennial families.

Where do bumblebees live in winter? During this period they live in underground shelters.

Fertilized queens spend the winter mostly in holes they have dug in the ground, and in the spring they build nests.

How and where do bumblebees nest and live? These insects have an amazing rare feature. Unlike other similar insects, all bumblebee larvae develop and are reared in one common chamber. In the free cells, the female creates reserves of honey and bee bread (honey dough) for periods of bad weather.

Features of social life

Like bees, bumblebees are social insects. They organize huge families numbering up to 200 individuals.

In such communities where bumblebees live, there is a surprisingly clear distribution of responsibilities for absolutely each of its members.

IN natural conditions the female, as a rule, lays 200-400 eggs to hatch workers, then she begins to lay eggs, from which females and males develop.

Many species have so-called small queens (this is the average between queens and workers). The latter, together with workers and small queens, build nests, collect honey and pollen (food) and lay unfertilized eggs, from which only males develop. And from the very last eggs laid by the queen, new queens hatch, which, in turn, are fertilized by males.

Only old queens remain for the winter, since the old ones die, males, workers and small queens also die. The entire community disperses.

What is a bumblebee nest like? Where do bumblebees live?

Fertilized queens, as mentioned above, mostly spend the winter in dug holes in the ground and only in the spring, during a thaw, do they begin to build their nests. This dwelling consists of irregular oval cells formed from rough reddish or brown wax. The nest is placed between stones, in the ground under moss, etc.

Bumblebees often use mole or mouse holes.

Usually only the very first cells of the nest consist of wax, and then the empty cocoons of the pupae serve as the next cells. All cells are also filled with coarse honey and flower dust.

Usually in bumblebee nests there are up to 200 individuals, less often - up to 500. True, people in artificial nests with heating managed to get families with the number of individuals up to 1000.

Reproduction process, nutrition

The queens lay their fertilized eggs almost throughout the summer. Subsequently, workers emerge from them, and then small queens emerge. Typically, several eggs are laid in each cell where bumblebees live. Some larvae hatching from eggs die due to lack of food.

Full development of the larvae occurs within about 12 days. Then they spin their own cocoons, where they turn into pupae. This period lasts about 2 weeks.

As the larvae grow, they gradually enlarge and expand the cell. And the female and working individuals constantly tidy up, repair and improve the home. After 30 days, workers hatch in the nest.

From the moment the first workers emerge, the number of inhabitants of the nest increases rapidly. And food supplies grow; abandoned empty cells are used to store them. And this is one of the features of the life of bumblebees. They never reuse a cell twice for hatching purposes. Therefore, old nests always have a rather sloppy appearance. On such dilapidated cells, insects build new ones, without observing any order.

Insects feed on plant nectar. To do this, they collect it from blooming flowers of various types.

In conclusion, a little interesting about bumblebees

Often on hot days, a bumblebee can be seen at the entrance to the nest, fluttering its wings. In this way he ventilates the nest.

. “Wool” helps the bumblebee warm up - it prevents heat loss and reduces it by half.

The bumblebee is capable of flying speeds of up to 18 km/h.

Bumblebee venom, unlike bee venom, does not harm humans, since this insect does not leave a sting in human skin. But it can sting many times.

There is a branch called bumblebee farming - breeding bumblebees for agricultural needs (pollinating various crops in order to increase their yield).

Without flower pollination, plants will not bear fruit. Neither strawberries, nor apples and pears, nor juicy and aromatic cucumbers and tomatoes. This requires insects in the garden. Children know this too; they are taught this at school. But in mature age Only gardeners and gardeners mainly think about this.

Garden bumblebee (young queen)

However, bees are disappearing in nature, so ecologists are trying to explain that keeping wild solitary bees near homes is not a problem, and even a great benefit. However, there are not many pollinating insects in the garden. But bees alone will not be able to pollinate everything around them, because, for example, they do not fly in the rain.

Male ground bumblebee

Bumblebees pollinate both in rain and in cold weather.

You may be surprised, but these little bees, bumblebees, are more effective pollinators than bees. They can also cope with long narrow flowers that bees cannot reach with their proboscis. And also, unlike bees, they fly from flower to flower both in rain and cool weather. spring weather when the bees don’t want to fly out of the hive yet. But it is in the spring that the harvest of fruit trees is laid.

Garden bumblebee queen

There is no need to be afraid of bumblebees. These are good-natured people who do not attack themselves. And there are about 300 species of them in the world. About half of the species can live in a hive, which a person will place in his garden, meadow or on the edge of the forest. The hive, of course, must meet the needs of the bumblebee and must imitate its natural housing. Unfortunately natural places There are fewer and fewer species suitable for bumblebee nests.

Nest of a young queen striped bumblebee

Empty bumblebee nest in autumn

How to properly care for bumblebees.

Queen Mother.

Female bumblebees spend the winter in the ground, and in the summer, as young queens, they create their own nest. Compared to worker bumblebees, the female differs in size and color, which can be seen by a non-specialist. It is assumed that only one in ten will survive the winter; spring burning of grass and fires can be fatal for female bumblebees.

A bumblebee is looking for a suitable place for a nest

Males, called drones (like bees), are always smaller than the queen of this species, but larger than worker bumblebees. They are often distinguished from females and workers by their brighter coloring or fluffiness. Soon after birth they leave their nest or hive forever.

Peter Dobry, for whom bumblebees have become his life's hobby and work, chooses these young bumblebees for the new hive, who are now looking for a place to lay a new nest in the spring. You can recognize them because the female bumblebee flies low to the ground and explores every hole in the ground to create a new nest for the year.

“The female will either find a prepared hive herself or you can direct her there,” says Peter. "This means carefully moving her into a prepared hive, placed in a suitable place in the shade. Wait half an hour, then open the entry hole so that the female has the opportunity to fly away if she does not like it there." - Peter advises what to do correctly when luring bumblebees to a new hive. "This is a free-living and protected species, it cannot be enslaved. The bumblebee itself must decide where it will live."

Ceramic hive for bumblebees

If, after the female has flown out of the hive, she begins to circle around it, this is good sign. “This means that she studies its location so that she can return to it. From my experience, every fourth attempt to populate the hive is successful,” says Peter.

Spacious wooden bumblebee hive. At the bottom left is the entrance, at the top left is a hole for ventilation, covered from the inside with a mesh.

You can make such a hive yourself, or you can buy a ready-made one in specialized stores. In essence, this is a wooden box with an entrance hole, from which a crooked corridor leads, simulating the entrance to a mouse hole. A ventilation hole is needed that can be opened in very hot weather. Pre-built hives have an entrance guard that protects the hive from entry by bumblebee pests.

The tube imitates the natural entrance to an abandoned mouse hole

The inside of the hive should be lined with suitable natural material, such as raw cotton, wool or pieces cotton fabric, mixed with dry moss.

“Bumblebees use this material to build their nest, they bite off pieces and chew, which is impossible if there are artificial materials in the hive.” - explains Peter.

Actually, nothing else is needed, the bumblebees will find everything else themselves. In the fall, the female queen will leave the hive, the workers and drones will die. Only the female queen will survive the winter by burying herself in the ground. And we need to clean the hive and prepare it for next year.

An amazing and unique time of flowering. Everyone rejoices at this and expects that the flowering will be followed by the ovary, and then the fruits. However, in order for the branches to bend under the weight of the filled fruits, the process of pollination is necessary.

Usually this useful work various insects, especially bees and bumblebees, diligently perform. But if bees fly out of the hive in search of nectar and pollen only at an air temperature of +12 °C, then bumblebees fly out at +4...+6 °C. Bumblebees work flawlessly in any weather from dawn to dusk. The most intense is before lunch. They don't care about light rain. Biologists have calculated that just one field bumblebee visits 2,634 flowers during a flight lasting 100 minutes.
Garden bumblebees do not fly to the surrounding fields and rightly take bribes from garden plants. If bumblebees choose a greenhouse as an apiary, then even in the heat there will not be a single barren flower on the tomato bushes. The same goes for cucumber beds. Already at dawn, bumblebees will collect nectar and pollen, pollinating flowers until the onset of 32–36 degree heat, when pollination is no longer useful.
For recent years bumblebees on summer cottages There are fewer of them, but every summer resident can attract them by making a beehive house for them. A box 150x150x150 mm is knocked together from old unhewn boards 25-30 mm thick. The bottom and lid can be made from 10-12 mm plywood. The bottom is nailed tightly to the body, the lid should close in a “snap-on” manner. To do this, four strips with a cross section of 15x15 mm are nailed along its perimeter from the inside. In the upper middle part of the front wall of the house, two adjacent holes with a diameter of 18 mm are drilled. One is closed with a wooden stopper, and the other is left open. As insulating material, tow, moss or material from a mouse nest is placed inside, no more than half the height of the box. Styrofoam the size of a box is placed under the houses to retain heat in the nest. By the way, you can use foam plastic instead of wooden parts. Bumblebee houses are placed at the end of April - beginning of May under apple trees or near gooseberries, currants, raspberries on the south side and always with entrances to the south, on pegs 25-35 cm high. To really have one bumblebee family, in the first years you have to place 5- 8 houses at a distance of 3-4 m from each other. Two or three “bumblebee” can be installed underground. To do this, tubes are made from wooden slats 10 mm thick. Four slats are knocked together so that the hole size is 18x18 mm. A wooden tube 80-90 cm long is tightly attached to the tap hole, to drilled hole in the house. The end of the tube placed in the entrance hole (entrance to the tube) is cut at an angle, which helps the bumblebee find the entrance. After attaching the tube to the house, all cracks are covered with clay to prevent ants from entering the box. The outer end of the tube and its internal channel to a depth of 50 mm is smeared with charcoal so that it looks like a dark hole, similar to a mouse hole. Use a shovel to cut out a piece of turf and set it aside. Dig a cubic hole and place the hive in it. The turf is also cut out for a hole-tube with a hole the size of an apple. To prevent rain from flowing into the hive through the tube, when installing it, it is slightly tilted with the entrance end down. The entire structure is covered with a small layer of earth and covered with turf.
If there are few female bumblebees, they are caught elsewhere and brought in matchboxes. Each female is placed in a separate box. The caught bumblebees are immediately allowed into the hive and the entrance is closed, which is opened only at 22-23 pm. If you don’t like the hive, the female may fly away in the morning. Then another “founder” is placed in the house.
It’s good when there are a lot of annual and perennial flowers on the site. Not only are they pleasing to the eye, but they are essential food for bumblebees, bees and other beneficial insects. There should be plenty of spring primroses near bumblebee nesting sites. The presence of late-flowering plants allows females preparing for a long winter to create the necessary reserves in their bodies.

Bumblebees are very useful insects. But unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of them. Bumblebees must be protected and created necessary conditions so that in your garden with the most early spring These workers flew - excellent plant pollinators. Nature rewarded these bright, beautiful insects more long proboscis than bees, so they are able to pollinate plants that honey bees cannot pollinate, such as red clover.

In red clover, the nectar is located in the flowers at such a depth that the shorter proboscis of the Central Russian bee cannot reach, so red clover bees practically do not pollinate, and the only pollinator is the bumblebee. Two species of bumblebees were even specially brought to Australia and New Zealand for pollination of fields sown with clover. After all, clover did not produce seeds without pollination.

Bumblebees, collecting nectar and pollen, simultaneously pollinate plants, just like bees. They collect pollen, just like bees, moving it with brushes on their legs. specific place and filling special baskets of leg hairs. Only individuals that collect pollen have such an apparatus; males do not have it.

bumblebee nest

In the spring, on your site, you can see how an overwintered female is looking for a suitable place for a nest, examining various burrows in the ground and holes in human buildings. A bumblebee's nest is a regular ball of twigs, moss, grass and other similar materials that serve to insulate the nest. It is done in shelters - in wide cracks, birdhouses, abandoned rodent burrows; it can be in any place that seems suitable to the female for making a nest.

A young female makes several cells in the nest and lays 5-6 eggs at the bottom of one. Bumblebees feed all the larvae together in one cell, putting reserves of honey and bee bread in other cells so that there is food in bad weather. The cells are built with an irregular spherical shape, building material is wax mixed with pollen.

Bumblebees, like bees, have wax glands on their abdomen that secrete wax, from which they build cells for breeding offspring and storing honey and bee bread. As the larvae grow, the walls of the cell move apart; the female, and then the workers, repair it all the time. When the time comes, the larvae spin cocoons and pupate. After some time, the female gnaws through the cocoons and small adult bumblebees emerge from them.

Small worker bumblebees appear 20-30 days after laying eggs. The female continues to lay eggs, and the workers take care of obtaining food and repairing the cell for the young. The nest grows quickly, food supplies are replenished, old cells are used for food storage after the larvae hatch. For each clutch of eggs laid by the female, new cells are built directly on the old ones, that is, the cell for hatching young is not used twice. With each new brood, the worker bumblebees become larger, almost comparable in size to the female. It is interesting that females can change in a nest; an old female can be replaced by a young one.

In large bumblebee nests there are most often 100-200 individuals, sometimes up to 500, the number depends on weather and food conditions. At the end of the season, the female lays eggs, from which males and females develop. They leave the nest in the fall and mate. After this, the males soon die, and the females look for shelter in which to overwinter in order to give birth to a new generation in the spring. Working individuals also die closer to winter; only fertilized females overwinter.

Bumblebees pollinators

Bumblebees are excellent pollinators. Their special value lies in the fact that they are one of the most cold-resistant insects, adapted to life in harsh northern conditions. Other pollinators either cannot live in cold conditions or live short time. Bumblebees reach north to Novaya Zemlya, Greenland, Alaska and Chukotka; they can live high in the mountains and pollinate plants near the border of eternal snow.

Where does this cold resistance come from? It turns out that the body temperature of bumblebees can exceed the temperature environment by 20-30 degrees, averaging 40 degrees, although insects are cold-blooded animals. This is achieved through work pectoral muscles, during which a characteristic hum is heard. If the humming stops, the insect's body temperature begins to drop, but as soon as the bumblebee, sitting in the nest, begins to rapidly contract the chest muscles without moving the wings, its body temperature rises.

If the entire mass of individuals in the nest hums, the temperature in it rises to 30-35 degrees. In the cold hours of the morning, a humming sound is always heard from the bumblebee nest; previously they even thought that it was the trumpeter bumblebee lifting the nest to work, but he was simply warming up before the flight and warming up the nest. In hot weather, these beneficial insects, like bees, ventilate their home by fluttering their wings before entering.

Do not offend bumblebees, because they do not sting for no reason, but only in defense. If on your garden plot or next to a private house there are nests of these beautiful, beneficial insects; pollination of fruit and berry crops is ensured even in cold weather, when bees and other insects do not fly.

This spring, female bumblebees have already flown into my house twice, I carefully caught them with a jar and released them - let these beauties build nests and pollinate plants in my garden. While I was carrying them to the window, the bumblebees buzzed resentfully in the jar, but then they calmly crawled out and flew away with a thick hum.
Author Olga Bogach

Pollination of greenhouse crops by bumblebees, as an element of the technology for obtaining high yields of greenhouse vegetables, was first introduced into the practice of greenhouse vegetable growing in Denmark, Holland and Belgium in the second half of the 1980s, and then quickly spread to other countries. Since the mid-1990s, bumblebee pollination began to gain popularity in our country. A domestic technology for year-round controlled breeding of bumblebees was developed and patented.

Among the first hives that were imported into our country at the end of the last century were hives of various designs, using various materials(plywood, cardboard, plastic).

One of the first hives purchased by ASHO named after. Telman, Tosnensky district Leningrad region, for pollination of greenhouse crops, from the Belgian company Biobest, had three tapholes (two upper and one lower) and a very complex design with a large number elements made of plastic and foam. Overall dimensions of the hive: 21 cm x 29 cm, height 20 cm.

Hives from Holland (BBB company), in the shape of a cardboard hexagonal box, were distinguished by the presence of free space around the nesting chamber. The plywood hive from Belgium (BIP) used a convex plastic lid that moved along the hive along grooves, and a plastic feeder gave the bumblebees free access to the syrup. Inside the feeder, bumblebees moved along two crossed ladders. Advertising for the manufacturer was placed on the walls of all bumblebee shelters.

Now the Russian market is supplied with hives from Israel, Belgium, as well as domestically produced hives. Biobest (Belgium) supplies several types of hives: standard hive (for use in protected soil), medium hive (used for plants with short period flowering), minihive (used in areas of 300 m² or less, in particular in breeding and seed production), multihive (3 medium hives combined in one waterproof package), which is used in orchards, berry plantations, and vegetable growing open ground, seed production of forage grasses.
Hives made in Israel and Belgium, which are now used in Russian greenhouses, are similar in overall dimensions, but they have significant differences.

The hive of the BBB company from Holland is made of cardboard, and all its main elements are also made of cardboard. Plastic is used only for making liners in the corners of the nesting chamber (protects the most from being chewed by bumblebees vulnerabilities hive), making a wick feeder and an entrance liner.

The beehive of the Yad Mordechai Apiary from Israel consists of a cardboard box in which is placed plastic bag with carbohydrate food and a wick, on top of the package there is a foam insert, on the insert there is a nesting chamber molded from light plastic. The bottom of the nesting chamber has a mesh elevation that protects the wick from being chewed by bumblebees and being built up by a rapidly growing nest. Nearby there is an oblong compartment, which apparently serves to place a supply of protein food before the bumblebee colony is sent to the greenhouse. The bottom is not monolithic (as, for example, in hives from Holland, Belgium or domestically produced hives), it consists of two parts. The platform (size: 18 cm x 19.5 cm) has a wick compartment similar to the previously described, but smaller in size, which is not structurally connected to anything, and a cone-shaped recess in the center (size 6.5 cm x 5.5 cm, depth 3 cm), which contains a plastic cone-shaped insert with a number. The method of fastening the platform and the presence of a wick compartment allows us to conclude that this platform was originally the bottom of a smaller nesting chamber used in a biological laboratory. Before the bumblebees are sent to the greenhouses, the bottom of this smaller chamber is probably connected to the bottom of the nesting chamber of the hive and the walls are disconnected. This simplifies the job of transferring bumblebees from a smaller hive to a hive larger size. The Belgian-made hive also has a platform (size 16 cm x 16 cm) with four rectangular holes (10 mm x 4 mm), which differs from the rest of the bottom in that it does not have ventilation holes, which are found throughout the rest of the bottom area and in several places on the walls of the plastic nesting chamber. It can be assumed that a bottom with a nest of a bumblebee family from a smaller hive is placed on this platform, and the protrusions of this bottom are installed in the holes for fixation. Existing types“trays” designed to accommodate the first lump of pollen on which the queen bumblebee establishes a nest, within this study have not been studied, but it is obvious that this part of the hive is buried in the bottom only in Israeli hives. The lid of the nesting chamber differs in the way it is opened: in Belgian-made hives it moves in plastic grooves along the nest, in Israeli-made hives it is fixed in plastic ledges, and in a Dutch hive it is tilted to the side or removed. Domestic modifications, in their main characteristics, repeat the hives of one of the three described designs. Characteristic feature plastic nesting chambers is that they have a special U-shaped side on the upper edge of the wall, bent inward along the entire perimeter of the chamber, which prevents bumblebees from leaving the hive when the lid is opened. The entrance is designed in such a way that the operator can at his own discretion regulate the flight in and out of bumblebees. The taphole pair consists of two holes with a diameter of 15 mm - 20 mm and a valve that opens the tapholes in a certain combination or closes them completely. A special design of the Bee-Lock entrance or a cone-shaped insert in the entrance hole (intended only for the entry of bumblebees), deepened into the hive at different distances (depending on the design), prevents the free exit of insects.

A comparative analysis of bumblebee colonies of various designs from leading countries exporting bumblebee families and domestically produced bumblebee colonies allows us to conclude that modern bumblebee farming tends to simplify the bumblebee home, lighten the entire structure as a whole, and compatibility of elements of nesting chambers different stages bumblebee family development, actively uses latest materials. The bumblebee nest is located at the bottom of the nesting chamber and expands as the colony grows horizontally and vertically (in layers), usually reaching the walls and roof. This circumstance was used in the serial production of hives for bumblebees: along with the traditionally removable roof, the bumblebee hive has a detachable bottom. The main element of nesting chambers for bumblebees is the bottom, on which the nest is placed and the entire life of the bumblebee family takes place. The detachable bottom allows you to easily move the bumblebee nest to larger hives. Depending on the size of the grown colony and its purpose, the use of a detachable bottom will allow the bumblebee colony to be transplanted into a hive of the required design and size at the required technological stage.

The development of bumblebee farming (amateur and industrial) will require the creation of special terminology to designate the structural elements of bumblebee hives. Using the terms used by domestic researchers for the first “box” hives, one could call the entire hive assembly assembly “bumblebee”, and the internal nesting chamber (in the figure: “ plastic container") - "bumblebee". Detachable bottom - a forgotten beekeeping term “tlo”, which denoted the flat bottom of the bees’ home. “Tub”, so called by domestic bumblebee breeders external resemblance, more accurately called a “starter” (this term has long been used in beekeeping). By analogy with a bee apiary, which in the old days was called a “bee house,” the location of several bumblebee hives in a limited area can be called a “bumblebee site.” This terminology may be especially useful to amateur entomologists when working with bumblebee colonies.

Literature
1. Ashcheulov, V.I. Bumblebees are pollinators of agricultural plants in greenhouses / Ascheulov V.I. – Ivanovo, 2001. – 233 p.
2. Grebennikov, V.S. Underground bait hives for bumblebees / Grebennikov V.S. // Beekeeping. – 1972. – No. 7. – P. 40-41.
3. Bodnarchuk, L.I. Regulation of food collection in bumblebees / Bodnarchuk L.I., Olifir V.N., Shalimov I.I. // Beekeeping. – 1977. – No. 5. – P. 24-25
4. Karpov, A.N. Beekeeping Dictionary / Karpov A.N. – M.: Russian language, 1997. – 384 p.
5. “Method of breeding bumblebees.” Patent No. 2099940. 1997