Bumble Bee - Help with homework

[chattius 2,531]

Our second returned from hospital finally and at monday she will be able to visit school after months being away. Her biology and english classes started a project while she was away to help nature: doing barriers for toads at breeding season and collect them and bring them to other side of a heavy traffic road, collecting waste in forest, building artificial nests, ... In english classes they have to write about this project in english.

 

Our daughter is not yet really able to do all the walking, so I told her that she could build "Hummelklappen" and watch for the Hummeln (humble bee or is it bumble bee?) when the young queens leave their nest. A "Hummelklappe" is something like a cat flap at house doors, but way smaller. Young queens search for openings to build a new nest. So you attach a Hummelklappe at a 'bumblebee hive' and have the flap slightly opened when they are searching for nests. When you see the queen flying in and out of the nest for a while you close the flap more and more. The queen will finally learn to open the flap but other animals(mainly wax moths) won't know the trick, so the nest is quite safe. The small stick in the next photo is used to reduce the opening each day a bit.

 

 

The plastic is bended at the end, so the bumblebee can move their heads below the plastic and open the flap from outside.

 

 

 

 

Video with bumble bees using the flap:

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/6437417/Steinhummel_4

 

I have my own interest in bumble bees. Cherries are problematic in my area. The time they blossom it is often too cold yet for bees to fly. So people do all possible tricks to have bumble bees around their fruit trees. Bumble-bees can fly at way lower temperatures than bees.

 

So what is needed:

Is keeping bumble bees at fruit farmers common in other countries, or is climate warm enough to use bees?

What is a good english page about keeping bumble bees, bumble bee flaps,...

 

I think it is okay to translate Hummelklappe as bumblebee-flap, but is there a special word for it which is used by experts but not in a dictionary. Or are people in your area use other systems than flaps, for smaller bumble bee races often a flexible pipe is used.

Edited April 29, 2011 by chattius

[essjayehm 58]

I found a "country" cure for wax-moths on this site

On the right side of the page, there are links to articles. About halfway down the list is "Wax Moth control" article that I spoke of.

 

I didn't surf around the site too much, but it appears there is quite a bit of bee info there, I hope it helps!

[masteff 64]

I'm not seeing much that's helpful. Only phrase I'd add to the mix is: flight hole (I assume that's what the flap is protecting; some of the places selling hives or w/ hive plans refer to it w/ that phrase).