The humble bee: its life history and how to domesticate it
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Published source details
Sladen F.W.L. (1912) The humble bee: its life history and how to domesticate it. Macmillan and Co., London.
Published source details Sladen F.W.L. (1912) The humble bee: its life history and how to domesticate it. Macmillan and Co., London.
Actions
This study is summarised as evidence for the following.
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Provide artificial nest sites for bumblebees Action Link |
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Rear declining bumblebees in captivity Action Link |
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Provide artificial nest sites for bumblebees
Sladen (1912) placed 112 underground nest boxes for bumblebees in his garden near Dover, in Kent, England in 1910 and 1911. Boxes were buried cylinders of tin or terracotta, or holes in the ground with a wooden cover, and a 38-75 cm tunnel leading to them. They were occupied by six species of bumblebee, including the short-haired bumblebee Bombus subterraneus now extinct from Britain. Thriving colonies developed in 13-19% of nest sites provided.
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Rear declining bumblebees in captivity
Sladen (1912) reared more than eight colonies of the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris and one of the red-tailed bumblebee B. lapidarius by confining one or two nest searching queens with between two and seven workers of the same species in wooden boxes supplied with honey and pollen. In the case of the red-tailed bumblebee, the queen was also confined with clusters of cocoons from another nest.
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