[Marches Farmer]

If you ever get a chance to attend a lecture by Prof. Goulson do go.  So we all think we know quite a lot about bumble bees, right?  Wrong, I think.  Much more fascinating than you ever thought.  I attended a lecture arranged by the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust last night, which was sold out - encouraging.

[Fleecewife]

If you ever get a chance to attend a lecture by Prof. Goulson do go.  So we all think we know quite a lot about bumble bees, right?  Wrong, I think.  Much more fascinating than you ever thought.  I attended a lecture arranged by the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust last night, which was sold out - encouraging.

Sounds brilliant!  I have tried and tried to find out info on all our British Bumbles, also solitary bees etc. Loads of stuff on honey bees and the odd bumble appears in insect books, but not what I'm looking for.  I'm a member of the British Bumble Bee Conservation group, but other than a big ID chart there's not much more info.
We had a couple of tree bees in our garden this year - I think this is the 'bee front' moving up the country.
I'll see if Prof Goulson has published anything accessible




modified to add: He has published 4 books - the scientific one has more than I need and a hefty price tag so didn't get that.  I did though buy one by Prys-Jones and Corbet which looks pretty much what I'm looking for.

[Marches Farmer]

I think he's published three books with a fourth due out next year.  The world has 1 type of honey bee, 250 bumble bees and 25,000 types of solitary and other bee.  Bumble bees' hair and the extremely rapid rate at which their wings have to beat to keep their relatively heavy body airborne mean they live mostly in countries that are quite cold.  Their range seems to be moving up from the south but not moving commensurately north.

[Steph Hen]

I had the pleasure of working on bumblebees with Dave for for 7-8 years! They really are fascinating and it was such a great working environment as he's so enthusiastic  I've done a few talks, but finished my PhD in 2013 so I'm a bit behind on the research now - I think everyone agrees that there's still tonnes to discover about them.

[cloddopper]

45 years ago I was looking at the idea of breeding  pollinating bumble bes for use in  the 30 or so massive tomato growing glasshouses near Long Stanton Cambs that belonged to my nieces husband's family.

 I couldn't discover much and so let the idea slide as at the time I had other fish in life to fry .

   Do you have any useful lines of reading to follow ?

[Steph Hen]

Breeding bumblebees in captivity for pollination is HUGE business! It's also not very easy. They like to be in quite warm fairly humid conditions. I had a go one year but didn't have a climate controlled room and struggled to keep conditions constant and it took ages to feed them all. And I got stung by escapees (first brood workers are so small!)
Bumblebee nest boxes (kind you can buy in garden centres) are also pretty useless. We trialled 100 and I think got one nest.
Dave's book is a good place to start if you want to know more about them. Literature for rearing bumbles in captivity; can't remember off the top of my head - I'll see if anything comes to me.

[cloddopper]

Thanks , I was asked to remove a nest of bumbles bees in a hay feed store . the bakes were raised on pallets and the nest was under teh bottom pallet . forty or so bales later one Bumble bee the size of a golf ball decide it had had enough and came at me on my left , swerved 7 stung me under my arm pit.. Ge god's & graces .. That was the most painful sting I've every had ..  I fair staggered to teh farm house and had to get the farmers wife help me out the bee suit and give me a coule of mugs of strong sweet tea before  I could carry on & remove the nest which was a good two feet in diameter and the thickness of th pallet .. just like a very large rice cake cluster of massive 3/4 dia x 1 " long golden sugar puffs & bumble bees  going for me like musket balls at the battle of the Alamo ..I won  ....... eventually .

Relocated them all safely a few hours later in a massive compost heap I had on our farm .

Seeing the organised randomness of the bumble bees wax combs over theh years  I would have thought a golf ball style set up with hollow tubes all over it would be an ideal nest  kick starter once you had  some grubs & a few bees to play with .

 Did you also have to give pollen feed to the bumble bees ?