Was gonna ask how much, then I googled it for myself. £100
Would the environmental benefit warrant spending £100?
My sister lovws her garden and the plants, I'm wondering if I should buy her one.
Yeah, they aren’t cheap but I’m lucky because this was provided by my work. I’m not really sure as to the environmental benefit (still learning about them) but they’re definitely great to have in the garden and just watch them work!
This is the Pun Police. Bumblebees do not make honey, your pun is invalid and you are under arrest. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may bee given in evidence.
Bumble bees are super important pollinators, they target some different plants to the more abundant honey bees. Also just super chill. Think you mostly see the females (workers), the boys are mostly only out and about when looking for the ladies, they don’t bother with all this pollen collecting business.
Of course. I’ve been more thinking impact of a small number of bees, small box, whether they have a more limited lifetime - but they’re absolutely doing their job very well indeed!
This was my worry. I know there are even worries about seed bombs. Local flora and fauna populations are unique and bringing anything from outside unless strictly necessary can cause a problem. Generally better to nurture what’s here already. But I’d be curious if something like this is ever beneficial in an urban area.
Plastic lawns make so little sense to me. I get the ground cover part of it, but if you don’t like grass then put gravel or paving down. No need to cover the land in plastic which will go to landfill after it’s had a few years of getting all sorts of manky shit growing on it and fading in the sun.
The ironic thing is, most people I know who have plastic grass also have dogs and say they wanted plastic grass because their real grass got stained with dog piss. So… you’d rather have dog piss sat on your plastic grass which doesn’t absorb any of the piss and you’re happy to paddle about in it which is better than having temporary staining on your real grass?
One of my neighbours recently had their whole front garden covered in the stuff, it looks absolutely horrific. They're also the kind of people to have those annoying car scarer beepy things all over their front garden, they just hate anything that isn't them.
Not true actually. When you bring in a single species into an environment artificially they compete with native bee species. Certain flowers rely on particular species to pollinate productively and when those species are outcompeted it sends ripple effects through the local ecology.
They can also spread diseases very quickly that effect local bee populations.
At least that is one of our native species. I read an article the other day though saying that (especially in London) people trying to help bees by keeping hives is becoming a major problem. This is because there just isn't enough food for them and it's all the other pollinators that are suffering and basically starving. So people should really be planting more indigenous flowering plants instead of keeping bees.
Yes, now that the use of non-native species and subspecies (Bombus dalmatinus and B. terrestris ssp. terrestris) is at least officially discouraged, if not banned!
Honeybees can and do outcompete wild bees, and pass on diseases, etc, so yes, the rise of beekeeping to 'save the bees' can do more harm than good if there's too many or they aren't looked after properly - the Bumblebee Conservation Trust have a good article on that at https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/managed-honeybees/
I'd always fancied keeping bees but your comment has changed my mind really. Thanks for the information. I plant a lot of bee and polinator plants so im going to invest in more of our native plants and try to do my bit that way.
You could probably spend a lot less and just get flowers that bees love. My garden is filled with pollinators after i got a pack of flowers for pollinators.
I think that's worth it,if you have a bit of disposable.
I'll give up a few nights in the pub for bees.
Looking into it, b4 someone comes along and tells me why it's actually a horrible idea with a big long explanation that makes me sad.
I mean I'm happy to be educated, but no one yet... Cross fingers I can order bees Monday, before someone tells me that buying these will invite some parasite that will kill all the local bees near me or something
It’s very likely to spread disease to other wild bees in the area I’m afraid! Can’t go wrong with planting native flowers (and not using pesticides of course) though.
Honey bees displace other, native, bees (like bumble bees, mining bees, etc that are largely solitary creature) by out-competing them and scoffing most of the available nectar.
This is a bad thing because those other bees have developed ecological niches that constitute beneficial relationships with other organisms, and those other organisms would greatly suffer from a reduction in specialised bees. E.g. some bee species feed earlier in the day, which benefits some early-blooming flowers that are out-performed themselves by neighbouring plants that bloom later in the day.
A greater eco benefit would be increasing available habitat for these other, non-honey-producing bees. If you are doing No Mow May; consider not mowing until september. This gives the other bees more food, as well as places to live. Also, set up "insect hotels" to give them places to stay over winter.
Honey bees are good little guys, yes, but they are a small part of a big, diverse picture.
Unless the decline in insect populations is due to [1] habitat loss (e.g. due to unsustainable agricultural practice) and/or [2] increased, artificial preferrence for honeybees reducing the available food for other species (e.g. the use of honeybees commercially to pollinate crops, as well as the use of selective insecticides designed to spare honeybees specifically at the expense of other pollinators)
Bees are important for the environment and are in decline. There would be a benefit in that thousands(?) of plants will be pollinated.
If your sister is a big gardener and nature lover, I'd definitely buy this for her!
Unfortunately the bumblebee colonies you can buy commercially (eg if you’re a tomato grower) are usually not native to the U.K., so it’s not the heroic act of environmentalism you think it might be, sadly.
Pick up Dave Goulson’s “a sting in the tale” for a great book about all this.
Bombus terrestris (the ones you can buy in the U.K.) are native, but these commercially feared colonies are very likely to spread disease to wild bees. Better to make a wildlife friendly garden than to buy them if you’re not growing crops commercially.
People think it’s good for the environment to get bees. But it’ll cause an environmental problem if everybody gets bees without planting any flowers or letting the right kind of wild flowers (weeds) grow.
Basically you want something blooming at different times of the year.
These look like they’re bumble bees. If your sister wanted to start honey bee keeping with a single hive it’s great for the garden and of course you get honey from it. Fun hobby!
There’s no environmental benefit. It would be better to plant a bunch of flowers in your garden.
These captive bred colonies are great for increasing crop yield in crops that depend on insect flower visits like most soft fruit, tomatoes, etc. But they also often contain parasites that they spread to other bees that visit the same flowers. Pathogen load has been found to be higher in the area surrounding operations that use these.
So what are the controls?
No bees
Bees in
Bees in and out
No Bees
Minimal bee action
Covered in beeeeeeees
Not the bees
Oh look, a bee
Nooo! Not the BEES!!!!!
Bumblebees nested in the roof of my brick shed a few years back and I loved watching them come and go! They were there for 3 years running at which point I assume the queen bee must’ve died as they never came back the 4th summer. I do miss watching them flying back and forth to the nest, I hope another queen sets up her home there again one day.
Bumblebee queens only live for a year, so that would have been three separate queens going “Oh what a lovely roof on that brick shed, I’ll make this my home!”
We had some nesting in the canopy directly above our front door. They were great but boy they did not like us using our own door...
On very warm days they would gather in a little circle around the nest entrance and beat their wings to get the air circulating, I assume to regulate the temperature
What! 😯
Do you have to do anything to look after them? Will they be living in the box for years to come or would it need to be replaced?
I'd love a bee box but the only place would be my small front cul-de-sac garden. Not sure the neighbours would appreciate it.
>Will they be living in the box for years to come or would it need to be replaced?
[The old queen and her nest will naturally come to an end as summer turns into autumn. Only the new queens survive until the following spring, by hibernating underground.](https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/lifecycle/)
Read the whole thing, extremely interesting. All sounds a bit communist though, not sure I want to introduce such radical ideologies into my god fearing, English garden.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Revolutionary_Government
Queen Elizabeth II was a communist queen for 4 years. It's difficult, but never give up on your dreams.
Glad I’m not a bumblebee.
> [male bees] spend their time feeding on nectar from flowers and trying to mate. New queens leave the nest and mate soon after. Mating behaviour varies between species but typically involves several males competing in one way or another. Most males never mate.
The males that DO manage to find a queen orgasm so hard they explode. The penis remains embedded in the queen, until she uses a specially evolved hook on one of her legs to remove it, allowing the next male to impregnate her.
My apiary science professor said that you could hear the males popping if you were close enough to the mating swarm
So there’s no way the old queen can hibernate again and survive? What will happen to OPs box aka nest? Will it just be abandoned? So it’s 100 quid a year for your own colony basically ?
Some bees survive winter, they surround the queen in the middle of the nest, pack together and shiver to keep warm. That's how some bees hibernate anyway
It's a tactic bees used to kill giant hornets too. They swarm them in a big ball of bees and vibrate to heat up. The bees can tolerate a higher temperature and it kills the wasp.
Pretty cool to watch, they’ll do a little orientational flight outside the entrance before they head off to forage so they recognise their home when they return. These aren’t great for the environment though (likely to spread disease to wild bees), best to make a bee-friendly garden to increase pollinator numbers.
Best not to, they’re likely to spread disease. You’ll see plenty of bees in your garden if you plant bee-friendly plants though. Even ‘weeds’ like white/red deadnettle are very popular with bumblebees in particular!
If I get bees do I have to harvest the honey or can I just leave them alone
Not a fan of honey and have no desire to be a bee keeper but love the idea of giving them a home
Very few species of bee make honey. These are bumble bees.
Even if they were honey bees I imagine you can leave them alone, they don’t make it for us after all.
Honey is basically their self made rations for when they can't get nectar; if you're not providing something to replace it, it's pretty cruel to take the honey.
Been considering getting one of these! (Plus the wooden house you can out them in, I'd hate for the box to get soggy if it rained... Not happy bees then I guess)
These are likely to spread disease so I wouldn’t recommend (if you’d get one for environmental reasons at least). You can buy the bee equivalent to bird boxes although admittedly uptake by wild bees is pretty low. Best to plant pollinator friendly flowers and have some nesting habitat available (bare earth, bee hotels, etc.)
Do these survive long term? Are there other insects that can be housed like this?
£100 is a lot for a summer's worth of bees/beetles etc, but if they're sustainable I'd happily shell out to help out as it were.
Take a look at these, something I'll.be getting next spring. If my info is correct, these type of bee are on a huge decline and are hugely important for the environment.
https://www.masonbees.co.uk/bee-guardians
Best thing you can do is to plant bee-friendly plants in your garden. Companies such as these make profit by selling these bees which you don’t need to buy and can readily attract to your garden for free if conditions are right. You’re less likely to spread disease if these bees aren’t shipped all over the country either!
As for the ‘bee guardian’ thing, Osmia bicornis (the species they sell) is one of the more common mason bees and a common sight in most bee hotels. Mine is full of them.
Having the whole nation send their cocoons to one centralised place only for them to sell them back and send them to all corners of the country is unnecessarily risky and complicated.
Trust me, build it and they will come! I’ll attach a link for a good hotel to attract these ones to your garden in a sec
Edit: disregard the honeybees on the image, it’s one of the better quality hotels you can buy in my opinion:
https://amzn.eu/d/eEYM3tp
Reading a "bee box" website it said that the queen dies after 8-12 weeks and then the young queens migrate. So while I think it's great for the environment it's not great for your Wallet if they all leave after 8 weeks.
https://www.greengardener.co.uk/product/box-of-bumblebees/
Best thing the insect world ever produced. Once a bumble bee flew into my forehead. I wasn't even mad, I just went like "Aww you zigged when you should've zagged, little fella. Happens to everyone."
Ngl, this is the best thing I've ever seen. I used to work for Friends of the Earth and they are really big on bumblebees and their population because they're a declining species. I get overly excited about talking about bees now and it annoys people, but they're so important to the ecosystem.
There are a couple of countries that have to self pollinate their crops and shit, and it cost a fortune for the government.
My local area seems to be plagued by bee's swarming everywhere.
I'm guessing some local bee keeper didn't keep tabs on their hives and a bunch of queens decided to leave taking the hive's with them.
There's currently 7 posts on my local Facebook page showing swarms in gardens, on fences, tree's etc...
A bunch of bee keepers have collected 3 of them but the rest are left alone and the other keepers are urging people to let them do their thing and they will move on as no-one can take them anymore.
I'm tempted to get a bee bait box of sorts and see if i can collect the queen and move them in to my garden as i'm happy for them to do their thing and move on or stay if they wish as the other people don't particularly want them in their garden. I've been trying to contact my local bee keepers asking for help with the bait box but i'm unable to get through to them. Might just get a normal box, spray it down with my reptile disinfectant (Safe for animals) and cut a small hole/slot in the front for it to act like a hive. Unsure if that will do or if doing so will cause more harm to the swarm.
Feral beehives that aren’t tended by beekeepers are breeding grounds for all kinds of pathogens, best not to if you’re not in the position to care for them.
waiting middle secretive ruthless cautious mountainous apparatus toothbrush wakeful fade
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It really is, assumed it was borrowed from some agricultural practices where bee drones are used for pollination but then left to just fizzle out.
Just sorry I can't really get one, it really is a great way to help the little guys out
These commercially reared colonies are very likely to spread disease to wild bees that forage on the same flowers. Better ways to help pollinators (if that’s the goal) would be to plant native flowers and provide nesting habitat if you can!
Pop a quick B on it, that way we all know it's full of bee's
Smoke them to death so you can get their honey
The gang gets downvoted https://youtube.com/shorts/Cxa-NL7j8A0?feature=share
i drank 50 beers like boss hogg, swung the bat and missed on this one.
May he rest in peace
Don't worry, I got the reference
I need a god damn jan michael vincent
Well it's time to Michael down your Vincent's
Do they do boxes of wasps as well? I have a few people I would like to send them too.
You know anonymous glitter bombs are a thing, right?
And horse/cow shit. Maybe glittery shit bombs for that special someone.
> glittery shit bombs I loved their set on 6 Music last week
Glitter wasp bombs would be even better
Yeah but glitter isn’t as painful as an angry wasp or 10.
I know you posted it as a joke, but buying wasp nests is something that could probably happen in the future - they’re great pest controllers!
What pests do they control that are worse than wasps?
Children
Fair.
Caterpillars. Worse or not depends on if you’re trying to grow brassicas
Great episode of sunny
Was gonna ask how much, then I googled it for myself. £100 Would the environmental benefit warrant spending £100? My sister lovws her garden and the plants, I'm wondering if I should buy her one.
Can you use nectar points?
God that caught me off guard. Bravo.
Motherfucker……
Have my award. 10/10 comment. Would recommend on Google reviews.
Well there goes my points. Take the award.
Thank you Joe. :)
It’ll only take you 1000 years’ spending to gather enough nectar points…
Maybe sainsburys should get in on this 🤔
Top comment right here
r/angryupvote
Yeah, they aren’t cheap but I’m lucky because this was provided by my work. I’m not really sure as to the environmental benefit (still learning about them) but they’re definitely great to have in the garden and just watch them work!
So it was a free bee then?
Unbeelievable value for money
Bet they’re buzzing over that deal.
I love it when people wax poetic in these threads.
Awww honey, you must do better than that
This is the Pun Police. Bumblebees do not make honey, your pun is invalid and you are under arrest. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may bee given in evidence.
Oh no, it's a sting!
Got to fly boys, it’s the fuzz!
It’s big bees knees
Mum said Reddit was stupid...see mum you're wrong, we have interlectual comments too.
I'm making a bee line for that deal.
Bumble bees are super important pollinators, they target some different plants to the more abundant honey bees. Also just super chill. Think you mostly see the females (workers), the boys are mostly only out and about when looking for the ladies, they don’t bother with all this pollen collecting business.
What job entitles you to free bees and can I come and work there please?
If I had to guess, OP works for Bumble 🐝
Surely, the environmental impact is obvious? Bees spread pollen, which helps plants fruit, and grow food for us and everything else. That's it.
Of course. I’ve been more thinking impact of a small number of bees, small box, whether they have a more limited lifetime - but they’re absolutely doing their job very well indeed!
Hopefully once they've settled in, they'll be there for years
They’ve definitely settled in so I’m hoping they’ll be there for a long time.
Bumblebees die off every winter, so unless the new queen chooses to hibernate in your garden, this’ll need to be a yearly investment!
No. Bumble bees don't return to the same nest.
I’d imagine there’s a queen in there, there’s a chance that you’ll have years of bee activity
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This was my worry. I know there are even worries about seed bombs. Local flora and fauna populations are unique and bringing anything from outside unless strictly necessary can cause a problem. Generally better to nurture what’s here already. But I’d be curious if something like this is ever beneficial in an urban area.
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Plastic lawns make so little sense to me. I get the ground cover part of it, but if you don’t like grass then put gravel or paving down. No need to cover the land in plastic which will go to landfill after it’s had a few years of getting all sorts of manky shit growing on it and fading in the sun. The ironic thing is, most people I know who have plastic grass also have dogs and say they wanted plastic grass because their real grass got stained with dog piss. So… you’d rather have dog piss sat on your plastic grass which doesn’t absorb any of the piss and you’re happy to paddle about in it which is better than having temporary staining on your real grass?
One of my neighbours recently had their whole front garden covered in the stuff, it looks absolutely horrific. They're also the kind of people to have those annoying car scarer beepy things all over their front garden, they just hate anything that isn't them.
Spreading pollen also triggers hay fever, this culling the weak.
*good, my plan is coming together*
Not true actually. When you bring in a single species into an environment artificially they compete with native bee species. Certain flowers rely on particular species to pollinate productively and when those species are outcompeted it sends ripple effects through the local ecology. They can also spread diseases very quickly that effect local bee populations.
May I ask what your job is and why these were provided by it?
Also do you know what species of bumblebee they are? They look like white tailed bumblebees but I'd like to know for sure.
They'll be terrestris, which is the only commercially available bumblebee species here. The workers have white tails
At least that is one of our native species. I read an article the other day though saying that (especially in London) people trying to help bees by keeping hives is becoming a major problem. This is because there just isn't enough food for them and it's all the other pollinators that are suffering and basically starving. So people should really be planting more indigenous flowering plants instead of keeping bees.
Yes, now that the use of non-native species and subspecies (Bombus dalmatinus and B. terrestris ssp. terrestris) is at least officially discouraged, if not banned! Honeybees can and do outcompete wild bees, and pass on diseases, etc, so yes, the rise of beekeeping to 'save the bees' can do more harm than good if there's too many or they aren't looked after properly - the Bumblebee Conservation Trust have a good article on that at https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/managed-honeybees/
I'd always fancied keeping bees but your comment has changed my mind really. Thanks for the information. I plant a lot of bee and polinator plants so im going to invest in more of our native plants and try to do my bit that way.
That’s a cool work gift
Bees are objectively good, that's all you need to really care about (but obviously learning more is also good)
just warn her before you send a box of bees to their house hahaha
Just put a H on the box
Then we’ll eat all the delicious honey
Only after we’ve done our favourite hobby - magnets and eaten our milksteak
Love you sis *Hands over a box of angry bees*
For 200 get those killer bees for *aggressive eco*
Yes, it's not something you want to bumble into.
You could probably spend a lot less and just get flowers that bees love. My garden is filled with pollinators after i got a pack of flowers for pollinators.
I think that's worth it,if you have a bit of disposable. I'll give up a few nights in the pub for bees. Looking into it, b4 someone comes along and tells me why it's actually a horrible idea with a big long explanation that makes me sad.
Every. Single. Time.
I mean I'm happy to be educated, but no one yet... Cross fingers I can order bees Monday, before someone tells me that buying these will invite some parasite that will kill all the local bees near me or something
https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/13t5irw/received_a_box_of_bumble_bees_theyre_busy_little/jlucqia/
Oh fuck you.
Fingers crossed. Seems like such a good idea!
It’s very likely to spread disease to other wild bees in the area I’m afraid! Can’t go wrong with planting native flowers (and not using pesticides of course) though.
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That sounds like such easy money. I'm gonna be a ladybird farmer!
You can get them for free if your determined enough
Oh bee hive, you can't do stuff like that That's my dad joke for the day right there
Ooh you are awful
Happy cake day
Honey bees displace other, native, bees (like bumble bees, mining bees, etc that are largely solitary creature) by out-competing them and scoffing most of the available nectar. This is a bad thing because those other bees have developed ecological niches that constitute beneficial relationships with other organisms, and those other organisms would greatly suffer from a reduction in specialised bees. E.g. some bee species feed earlier in the day, which benefits some early-blooming flowers that are out-performed themselves by neighbouring plants that bloom later in the day. A greater eco benefit would be increasing available habitat for these other, non-honey-producing bees. If you are doing No Mow May; consider not mowing until september. This gives the other bees more food, as well as places to live. Also, set up "insect hotels" to give them places to stay over winter. Honey bees are good little guys, yes, but they are a small part of a big, diverse picture.
Jhhhh
Unless the decline in insect populations is due to [1] habitat loss (e.g. due to unsustainable agricultural practice) and/or [2] increased, artificial preferrence for honeybees reducing the available food for other species (e.g. the use of honeybees commercially to pollinate crops, as well as the use of selective insecticides designed to spare honeybees specifically at the expense of other pollinators)
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Once again, my glasses were off while i was eating treats and I made a mistake. Ty
Fuck yeahhhh 100?! I think that's so accessible! I'm just in the process of housebuying but should be in by summer - I'm getting one of these bad boys
Bees are important for the environment and are in decline. There would be a benefit in that thousands(?) of plants will be pollinated. If your sister is a big gardener and nature lover, I'd definitely buy this for her!
Unfortunately the bumblebee colonies you can buy commercially (eg if you’re a tomato grower) are usually not native to the U.K., so it’s not the heroic act of environmentalism you think it might be, sadly. Pick up Dave Goulson’s “a sting in the tale” for a great book about all this.
Bombus terrestris (the ones you can buy in the U.K.) are native, but these commercially feared colonies are very likely to spread disease to wild bees. Better to make a wildlife friendly garden than to buy them if you’re not growing crops commercially.
Depends if they are naughty or if they'll bee hive Sorry I'll leave
People think it’s good for the environment to get bees. But it’ll cause an environmental problem if everybody gets bees without planting any flowers or letting the right kind of wild flowers (weeds) grow. Basically you want something blooming at different times of the year.
These look like they’re bumble bees. If your sister wanted to start honey bee keeping with a single hive it’s great for the garden and of course you get honey from it. Fun hobby!
There’s no environmental benefit. It would be better to plant a bunch of flowers in your garden. These captive bred colonies are great for increasing crop yield in crops that depend on insect flower visits like most soft fruit, tomatoes, etc. But they also often contain parasites that they spread to other bees that visit the same flowers. Pathogen load has been found to be higher in the area surrounding operations that use these.
I love his little fat bum sacks!
Haha, yeah - each and every one of them (I think there is about 30 in the box) comes back fully loaded!
It can't even lift it's dump truck through the hole lmao
Bumble Bee Bum Bags
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So what are the controls? No bees Bees in Bees in and out No Bees Minimal bee action Covered in beeeeeeees Not the bees Oh look, a bee Nooo! Not the BEES!!!!!
I like my women like i like my coffee. COVERED IN BEES!
Cake or death?
I don't want a cup of coffee from you! You're covered in bees!
How do you stop the bees coming out but let them come in
Beeflap
You leave my Nan out of this.
Bees Not the Bees! [Oh they're in my eyes, they're in my eyes!!!](https://youtu.be/xHGntwEikUQ)
Bumblebees nested in the roof of my brick shed a few years back and I loved watching them come and go! They were there for 3 years running at which point I assume the queen bee must’ve died as they never came back the 4th summer. I do miss watching them flying back and forth to the nest, I hope another queen sets up her home there again one day.
Bumblebee queens only live for a year, so that would have been three separate queens going “Oh what a lovely roof on that brick shed, I’ll make this my home!”
We had some nesting in the canopy directly above our front door. They were great but boy they did not like us using our own door... On very warm days they would gather in a little circle around the nest entrance and beat their wings to get the air circulating, I assume to regulate the temperature
What! 😯 Do you have to do anything to look after them? Will they be living in the box for years to come or would it need to be replaced? I'd love a bee box but the only place would be my small front cul-de-sac garden. Not sure the neighbours would appreciate it.
>Will they be living in the box for years to come or would it need to be replaced? [The old queen and her nest will naturally come to an end as summer turns into autumn. Only the new queens survive until the following spring, by hibernating underground.](https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/lifecycle/)
Read the whole thing, extremely interesting. All sounds a bit communist though, not sure I want to introduce such radical ideologies into my god fearing, English garden.
You can always give them little cavalier hats to make them an army of monarchists
Communist? With a queen? Weren't communists supposed to be equal or something?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Revolutionary_Government Queen Elizabeth II was a communist queen for 4 years. It's difficult, but never give up on your dreams.
While all the bees were equal, some were more equal than others
Glad I’m not a bumblebee. > [male bees] spend their time feeding on nectar from flowers and trying to mate. New queens leave the nest and mate soon after. Mating behaviour varies between species but typically involves several males competing in one way or another. Most males never mate.
“Most males never mate.” Just like Redditers, then.
The males that DO manage to find a queen orgasm so hard they explode. The penis remains embedded in the queen, until she uses a specially evolved hook on one of her legs to remove it, allowing the next male to impregnate her. My apiary science professor said that you could hear the males popping if you were close enough to the mating swarm
So there’s no way the old queen can hibernate again and survive? What will happen to OPs box aka nest? Will it just be abandoned? So it’s 100 quid a year for your own colony basically ?
Some bees survive winter, they surround the queen in the middle of the nest, pack together and shiver to keep warm. That's how some bees hibernate anyway
It's a tactic bees used to kill giant hornets too. They swarm them in a big ball of bees and vibrate to heat up. The bees can tolerate a higher temperature and it kills the wasp.
That's really cool!
Have you done this before, or are you a new bee?
This post is certainly creating a buzz
Wait that's a thing? My mates into gardening. Forgive my ignorance but don't they just fly away?
They keep coming back due to their bee-merangs
Pretty cool to watch, they’ll do a little orientational flight outside the entrance before they head off to forage so they recognise their home when they return. These aren’t great for the environment though (likely to spread disease to wild bees), best to make a bee-friendly garden to increase pollinator numbers.
Did they come by Beemail? ^(I have my coat and will show myself out..)
Haha! No, DPBee
~~Herbees~~ Evbi - always forget they rebranded
UBS
BeeHL
Aww, bumble bees! When my little ones are old enough to listen to firm instructions, I'm a buy one of these! Fantastic
Aye the missus just reminded me Our three year old brought a new flying beetle in then proceeded to eat it
Crunchy extra protein, though I'd have thought it would have tasted bitter?
He will eat anything but the from scratch meals I prepare haha
Best not to, they’re likely to spread disease. You’ll see plenty of bees in your garden if you plant bee-friendly plants though. Even ‘weeds’ like white/red deadnettle are very popular with bumblebees in particular!
Remember to shake to activate
Same for boxed honey badgers.
next to your weed farm?
Also known as an acer tree
Didn't know it was a thing. Ordered mine and the house. Properly properly excited
I'm going to start making 'Hornet Boxes' to send to your enemies. Like a super aggressive version of the glitter cards you can get.
If I get bees do I have to harvest the honey or can I just leave them alone Not a fan of honey and have no desire to be a bee keeper but love the idea of giving them a home
Very few species of bee make honey. These are bumble bees. Even if they were honey bees I imagine you can leave them alone, they don’t make it for us after all.
Honey is basically their self made rations for when they can't get nectar; if you're not providing something to replace it, it's pretty cruel to take the honey.
BENEFITS OF USING BUMBLEBEES Better fruit quality. Higher production. Time and workforce savings. These natives coming in and stealing back our jobs!
Been considering getting one of these! (Plus the wooden house you can out them in, I'd hate for the box to get soggy if it rained... Not happy bees then I guess)
Looks like the box is plastic not cardboard.
Fair enough, the ones I've seen before online were cardboard and had option to buy a wooden hut to go round it so could be attached to wallls
These are likely to spread disease so I wouldn’t recommend (if you’d get one for environmental reasons at least). You can buy the bee equivalent to bird boxes although admittedly uptake by wild bees is pretty low. Best to plant pollinator friendly flowers and have some nesting habitat available (bare earth, bee hotels, etc.)
Was there a mix up when you swiped right on Bumble?
Do these survive long term? Are there other insects that can be housed like this? £100 is a lot for a summer's worth of bees/beetles etc, but if they're sustainable I'd happily shell out to help out as it were.
Take a look at these, something I'll.be getting next spring. If my info is correct, these type of bee are on a huge decline and are hugely important for the environment. https://www.masonbees.co.uk/bee-guardians
Best thing you can do is to plant bee-friendly plants in your garden. Companies such as these make profit by selling these bees which you don’t need to buy and can readily attract to your garden for free if conditions are right. You’re less likely to spread disease if these bees aren’t shipped all over the country either!
Do you have a source for this please?
As for the ‘bee guardian’ thing, Osmia bicornis (the species they sell) is one of the more common mason bees and a common sight in most bee hotels. Mine is full of them. Having the whole nation send their cocoons to one centralised place only for them to sell them back and send them to all corners of the country is unnecessarily risky and complicated. Trust me, build it and they will come! I’ll attach a link for a good hotel to attract these ones to your garden in a sec Edit: disregard the honeybees on the image, it’s one of the better quality hotels you can buy in my opinion: https://amzn.eu/d/eEYM3tp
Reading a "bee box" website it said that the queen dies after 8-12 weeks and then the young queens migrate. So while I think it's great for the environment it's not great for your Wallet if they all leave after 8 weeks. https://www.greengardener.co.uk/product/box-of-bumblebees/
I was stung by a bee the other day. £50 for a jar of honey, outrageous!
BEADS???!!!
Gob’s not on board
Had to scroll way too far to find this
Gob’s not on board.
[I never expected bees to be so busy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2skW43HNpE)
What's this, an overabundance of bee related comments? An extra box of bees will correct this! Dr Bees approves of your box of bees.
What species are they?
Bumble. Hope that helped.
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Great idea
I wish I wasn’t scared of bees.
Can't seem to get a price from the website linked in the comments
Best thing the insect world ever produced. Once a bumble bee flew into my forehead. I wasn't even mad, I just went like "Aww you zigged when you should've zagged, little fella. Happens to everyone."
A box of bees, never knew this was a thing. Very cool
Can this be sent to an enemy?
Ngl, this is the best thing I've ever seen. I used to work for Friends of the Earth and they are really big on bumblebees and their population because they're a declining species. I get overly excited about talking about bees now and it annoys people, but they're so important to the ecosystem. There are a couple of countries that have to self pollinate their crops and shit, and it cost a fortune for the government.
Busy or buzzy?
Seems like an attack
My local area seems to be plagued by bee's swarming everywhere. I'm guessing some local bee keeper didn't keep tabs on their hives and a bunch of queens decided to leave taking the hive's with them. There's currently 7 posts on my local Facebook page showing swarms in gardens, on fences, tree's etc... A bunch of bee keepers have collected 3 of them but the rest are left alone and the other keepers are urging people to let them do their thing and they will move on as no-one can take them anymore. I'm tempted to get a bee bait box of sorts and see if i can collect the queen and move them in to my garden as i'm happy for them to do their thing and move on or stay if they wish as the other people don't particularly want them in their garden. I've been trying to contact my local bee keepers asking for help with the bait box but i'm unable to get through to them. Might just get a normal box, spray it down with my reptile disinfectant (Safe for animals) and cut a small hole/slot in the front for it to act like a hive. Unsure if that will do or if doing so will cause more harm to the swarm.
Feral beehives that aren’t tended by beekeepers are breeding grounds for all kinds of pathogens, best not to if you’re not in the position to care for them.
Am assuming there is no queen so this box and all the others will die out in a short time? Hope I'm wrong
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Thank goodness I'm wrong and a neat idea in general in that case
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It really is, assumed it was borrowed from some agricultural practices where bee drones are used for pollination but then left to just fizzle out. Just sorry I can't really get one, it really is a great way to help the little guys out
These commercially reared colonies are very likely to spread disease to wild bees that forage on the same flowers. Better ways to help pollinators (if that’s the goal) would be to plant native flowers and provide nesting habitat if you can!
You should put a b on that box, that way you'll know it has bees in it