Experiments in Attracting Queen Bumblebees to Artificial Domicles1

Assessing the efficacy of artificial domiciles for bumblebees

“…The location of domiciles placed in the botanical garden site were selected based on the presence of an abundance of nest site searching queens in the previous year, a method of site selection which has also often yielded successful results in past studies (Frison 1926;Pomeroy 1981;Sladen 1912). It is possible that an abundance of nest site searching queens may reflect a deficit of nest sites relative to local bumblebee population sizes.…”

“…Artificial domiciles for bumblebees have been used with some success in Canada, New Zealand and the US (Donovan & Weir 1978;Frison 1926;Fye & Medler 1954;Pomeroy 1981;Richards 1978Richards , 1987 but success has been very limited in similar trials conducted in recent years in the UK (Carvell 2000;Fussell & Corbet 1992;Gaston et al 2005). Habitat, position relative to the ground and timing of placement are all important factors in determining occupancy rates and the species most likely to occupy domiciles (Frison 1926;Hobbs 1967;Hobbs et al 1962;Richards 1978), but there appears to be little effect of the materials used or the shape and size of the domicile on their attractiveness to bumblebee queens (Pomeroy 1981;Richards 1978).…”

“…Habitat, position relative to the ground and timing of placement are all important factors in determining occupancy rates and the species most likely to occupy domiciles (Frison 1926;Hobbs 1967;Hobbs et al 1962;Richards 1978), but there appears to be little effect of the materials used or the shape and size of the domicile on their attractiveness to bumblebee queens (Pomeroy 1981;Richards 1978). Since timing and site selection appear to be so important in influencing uptake rates it is possible that poor siting and/or timing may be responsible for the comparatively low occupancy rates achieved in the UK.…”

Bumble Boosters- Doing Science as a Community of Learners

“…During the past century, several researchers tried, with limited success, to create a domicile that was readily accepted. The highest acceptance rates for North American bumble bee species were reported by Frison (1926) at 42%, Fye andMedler (1954) at 34%, andHobbs (1967) at 45%.…”

Artificial Domicile Use by Bumble Bees (Bombus; Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Ontario, Canada

“…Bumble bee domestication and rearing for crop pollination and research has a long history, including the development of in situ (domiciles) and ex situ (lab rearing of spring-caught queens) methodologies (Sladen 1912, Velthuis and Van Doorn 2006). Domicile use began in early-20th-century England (Sladen 1912) and later expanded through the United Kingdom (Lye et al 2011) and into New Zealand (e.g., Donovan and Wier 1978) and North America (e.g., Frison 1926). Historically, occupancy ranged from <10% (Macfarlane 1974) to between 20 and 50% (Sladen 1912, Frison 1926, Fye and Medler 1954, Donovan and Wier 1978, Richards 1978).…”