Window Watchers (June 4, 1954)

hi when the Watchers see what's up here on the bulletin board go today it's a bumble bee and it's one was mounted and spread and the little name tag is flight on it and everything else he was up there on the bulletin board today because that's what we're going to talk about bumblebee my movies are just a little bit different from from other kinds of bees mainly because of their size and because of their color but Bob holstrom is over here today and he knows a lot about bumblebees so he's going to tell us about them and you nobody has here in this jar a whole lot of bumblebees well uh put a little life into them here all right and then maybe in here a buzz huh I'm gonna be able to hear the maybe this guy to eat oh now that mad here on budget later Watchers ooh listen to it those are Queen bumblebees that I collected for you to see here this afternoon just in areas right around boot Boone and aims here out in Boone County are those were collected on red clover and dandelion flowers they were out after the rains trying to get a little bit of nectar which they uses food I think it might be advisable to give you a little idea as to just how bumblebees live and I think to do that our best bet will be to go back and draw some pictures in that the rains made it such that the bumblebees didn't have any home started this year did they live in hyde no bumblebees usually live in the ground and we'll draw this line indicating the surface of the ground and then in the spring these Queen bumblebees search out a mouse nest or some other hollow in the ground such as I've drawn here and these Queen bumble bees fly down land on the ground here and it's usually in a rather protected place with a lot of grass growing around where the entrance to the mouse hole would be now the mouse has left this whole that's just yet very much a vacant apartment at this stage so the bumblebee comes down into this mouse's hole and builds a little nest in order to do that she gets real fine grass a little bits of hair a little bits of wool that you might find around and makes a very soft nest just like a bird would make a nest or a chicken would make a nest and in that nest she places a big ball of Paula now this pollen she collects from these various flowers that I mentioned the dandelion this time of the year and makes this large ball and on top of that she draws out a little cup affair which she makes with wax it's a waxy substance that she builds in her body beeswax it would be similar to what we know is beeswax and makes this cup on top of this ball of Paula this pollen is the feed for the young bees it has a little bit of sweetening in it that she gets from the nectar from the flowers and it's full of vitamins and all kinds of energy that the young bees will be needy when she gets that completed and she lays from 4 to 16 eggs in this little cup on top of this ball Paula how big are the eggs oh they're very small just a little bit larger than the head of a pin Annie then strange as it may seem the queen bee will stretch out over this nest we'll call that the queen bee and keep those eggs warm just like a chicken yes sir just like a chicken it's very cold this time of the year for young bees and in order to keep them warm so they can develop and grow into adult bees achieving Nestle's over the nest spreads out her body quite a bit longer than it is as you see them in the bottle and actually keeps the eggs warm until they hatch these eggs hatch in about four days into little worms we call them larvae and then in about another week they after feeding on this pollen they make a little what we call a pupil case it's very similar to what the butterfly the villains and this pupa case is found around here on various parts of the parts of the nest and then about ten days later those emerge the young be crawls out of that as the full grown be now these bees that come out are what we call workers and they do not lay eggs their purpose is to gather more honey or nectar from the flowers and more pollen to make more of these pollen balls in the nest so that other eggs laid by our queen bee can develop into full-grown be now is the queen bee this one right there is that the only one that can lay the egg that's the only one that lays the eggs that develop into the worker now some of these workers can lay eggs which will develop into drones the male bees later in the season now with these newbies coming in and bringing food to the nest the first Queen the queen that we saw here in the bottle no longer leaves the nest for food to care for the young beads her job then is to stay in the nest and just produce eggs and produce warmth for these young bees developing in this nest and as we can see the nest will have to be bigger they expand out around the various portions of the what was formerly the home of the mouse now in addition to these balls of pollen the Queen be prepared a little cup affair here which she fills with nectar which is thickened almost to the consistency of what we know is honey and she uses that as speed while she is incubating or warming these young bees and also when the other bees go out to collect nectar they fill this honey pot so that she will have food inside the nest so that she won't have to travel out around the country to get food for the young baby they just bring different breakfasting that's right it's breakfast in bed from there on out for the for the queen bee and in addition to this cup which the Queen made originally they make other cups at different places around the nest and those are all filled with honey well now after the queen bee this one here has sound that one nip will just say that there's one left is there now and after the queen bee has been on that one nest and the eggs hatch and go into their little cocoons and come out as full-grown bees well then if she's the only one that's playing at the eggs she can't sit on all the age certainly no you see at that stage that you have more bees in the hot in the what we would call the bumble bees hive and in the fact that the other bees are in there they are making it warmer just like when you get a lot of people in a room the temperature goes up it gets quite long so if she doesn't have to sit on them no that's true and in addition to that temperatures getting warmer about that time of the year it's the middle of the summer and the ground is warm the air is warm and the need for sitting on the nest has has passed it's just for those first few bees that she raises in the spring when it's very cold as it is in the evenings now where are some of the other places that bumblebees might build their nests you guys in an old mouse hole primarily it will be close to the ground now you may find them under logs under piles of wood under bricks usually very close to the soil and if the grass and very heavy and you have a lot of brush you'll find them down under that coat of code of grass matted on the ground our bumblebees larger these fearless larger than regular honeybees yes are they always larger than other kinds of bee bumble bees are our largest be and these represent just one type of be a bumble bee that we find here in Iowa here we have other types of bees a bumble bees which vary a little bit in color from the bees we had there now that will vary from the different stripes of yellow on black on on the bumblebee now this is a queen bumble bee here that's the large be as we see it there now later in the season the first bees that she produces those that she sits on the nest to incubate come out as smaller bees and these are the workers and you notice the difference in size as compared to the queen bee that's quite a bit small quite a bit smaller and that first development into a smaller B is primarily because the queen bee being just one B can't provide enough food and enough warmth early in the spring for the bees that she is raising all by herself to develop into a larger full-size be so later in the summer when she has a lot of the worker bees around her to help her then she begins to produce bees which will in turn become Queens for next year and these queen bees develop just as large as she is and at the same time drones or the male bees are developed and these queen bees which are better fed and therefore better size better develop will be the bees that will when fall comes crawl down into the grass down into the soil and hibernate to come through the winter and start out again as the one be that starts a bumble bee colony what happens all the other bees including the old queen will die due to cold weather and lack of storage what happens to this this queen bee then that buries herself in the fall sleeps through the winter and starts a new colony then does she die at the end of this she die she dies at the end of the second year it's just about a whole 12 months life horror possibly a little bit longer well they certainly don't like to be cooped up in this jar no they don't I think we'll have to turn them loose so that they can get out and help pollinate our flowers this summer each of these bees will produce a nest of her own and produce a lot of other bumblebees that will help to make more red clover alfalfa seed for us here in the Midwest well I certainly thank you for for coming over this afternoon talking about bumblebees with it we're going to have someone else come in next week and talk about the regular honeybees and it'll be kind of fun to all kind of compare notes and see how they differ and I suppose they do so thank you again for coming and good bye now