Ruud Kleinpaste: Bumblebees are ready for winter

A few months ago, we chatted about the bumblebee project started at Tekapo School. The kids and teachers created some raised beds full of flowers that attract bumblebees.  

We have four species here in Aotearoa. The big ones (Buff-tailed bumblebee) are the most common species and also the best pollinators we’ve got (kiwifruit, melons, blueberries, broad beans, etc). These insects are so important in our gardens!  

For me they are the crucial pollinators on my tomatoes (and capsicums) in the tunnel house. The irony is that tomatoes do not produce nectar (to attract pollinators), instead bumble bees are lured to tomatoes for the pollen they can dislodge by vibrating the flowers (a buzz-movement!). 

You could also pollinate your tomatoes by using an electric toothbrush that shakes the tomato flowers, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered with that. 

Buzzing is achieved by vibrating the thoracic muscles very fast while leaving the wings in “neutral”. That same trick allows the hibernating queens to warm themselves up on the coldest mornings of winter.  

Bumblebees are different from Honeybees in a number of aspects: they do not have a “hive” and don’t gather a lot of nectar. Their colony is usually small (≈100-150 individuals), and last no more than one summer. That’s it!  

Now is the crucial time for the colony to look after the bumbles’ next generation: you see the Gynes (next generation queens) mating with male bumblebees. The fertilised queens will then look for a suitable place to hibernate – a place that could become the nest site for next spring: dry and dark and able to be excavated.  

The kids at Tekapo school are inserting small holes in the steep banks around the playing field. Alternatively, they make some small wooden “nest sites” in sheltered areas, hoping that the fertilised queens use those as their winter abode.  

I reckon that gardeners could create suitable holes like that to attract these pollinators – under a tree trunk, in deep, dry mulch at the base of a sheltering tree.  

I am trialling a wooden bumblebee box in the shade of trees and shrubs; inside that box is a heap of botanical material from an old mouse-nest. I was told that the overwintering bumblebees seem to love the small of that old mouse nest and their poos. I suppose that’s the way they find their shelter sites in Nature too.   

And here’s hoping I get a new colony of bumblebees in the garden before winter, so that the queen boss can raise my pollinators for spring this year…  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from news Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
They'd be.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
He to eleven non news talks, he'd be a man.
The Garden Root Climb past is here with us this.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Morning, Gilda Kiyota check.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Just trying to irritate us. He's uh, he's referencing a
subject this morning, bumblebees that are preparing for winter.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah. Yeah, because you remember a couple of months ago
I was talking about take a post school and all
that sort of stuff that we were doing there for
this for one of the rare species.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
But anyway, I just want to just make a general
statement about prices.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
The large bumble bee that you've probably even your garden
and everybody has in New Zealand, and that.

Speaker 5 (00:50):
Is one of the best pollinators we have the news
in by the way, and really really cool to actually
actually encouraged to be at your place. So what the
trick is here that with these particular book is that
they don't really go for nectar or not that much

(01:12):
because they don't make if you like big hives that.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Got the nests and they go to one. If you're
like cycle a year, that's it. And now comes the
time when that is slowing down and right he comes.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
The coolest thing of.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
All is that first as I use them for pollination
of my tomatos.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Right right, okay, Yeah, And they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Do it like a bee by sticking their tongue in
and then sucking nectar because tomatoes don't have nectar, but
they like the pollen, so the way they get the
pollen out. But it is a crazy, really cool thing.
You can always hear a bumblebee coming past, you know,
that sort of stuff, and that and that vibration is
how they actually shake the pollen out of the flowers.

(01:59):
It's a really cool thing.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
I saw a lot of them. I saw a lot
of bumblebees on my caps complant summer.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Exactly the same thing, same sort of thing. And the
thing is, if you don't have any bubble bees, you
can use for insistant and vibrating if you like a toothbrush,
you know, one of those things to do exactly the
same thing. But again, that noise and then that whole
movements get those pollinating.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Anyway, that's it. But what we're getting now is that.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
The queens are quickly laying a hell of a lot
of eggs to get young queens. They call them gains, right,
and these things need to mate with male bubble bees
right now. And what happens then is that the mated
queens will hibernate literally in a little hole in the
ground or in a little box that you'll find on

(02:50):
the website that I've put there, a little box that
you can make for them, and these things will literally
go through winter, and they even go through winter at
four degrees because they can actually make themselves warm by vibrating,
like becoming really nice.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
And they really call these things. But this is important
because if you want those bubble bees to be around,
now's the time to look after them and make sure
that you've got places for them to stay. That is
what that is about.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
And so all these little bits and pieces will be
on the website. I think Libya sorted that all that,
and he comes the nicest thing. If you've got a
little box and you put an old mouse nest in
with mouse pool, you'll be surprised how these guys, these
new queen bumblebees, go oh what's the oh I.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
Like that and they go in and they live in
that little.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Real yeah, yeah, there you go, Well, there you go. Yeah,
Lemon's had lemonade lemonade. Yeah, very good, Thank you sir.
We will catch you you very soon. Rude climb past
in the garden for us and all of that stuff,
including some pictures of those little kind of wooden nests.

(04:04):
You want to repurpose some mass shoppings and a mouse nist,
then that's the way to do it. We'll put that
photo up on the website NEWSTORKSIDB dot co dot MZ.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
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