Bumblebee breeding business plan. Artificial house for bumblebees Do-it-yourself hives for bumblebees drawings

Due to the deteriorating environment, especially near cities, in garden plots
We (with tears in our eyes) see our beloved plants die.

There is a way out of this - get garden bumblebees. A garden bumblebee (unlike a bee) pollinates all plants, since its proboscis is much longer than a bee's.

The garden bumblebee secretes special enzymes that destroy pathogenic plant bacteria.

Where there are many bumblebees, wasps do not settle.

Bumblebee honey has excellent healing properties, after eating just a few capsules of bumblebee honey, you will immediately feel a surge of strength, you will have fatigue and a drowsy attitude to life - you just want to fly.

Garden bumblebees do not attack humans, and bumblebee drones have no sting at all!

Interestingly, absolutely all bumblebees belong to the so-called polytrophs. They absolutely do not care what to pollinate.
These insects bring invaluable benefits to any summer cottage, contributing to the active growth of the crop on it.

Each new season, female bumblebees begin to re-build their own home in order to create a new family in it again.
Moreover, their minks can be both underground and aboveground.

Unlike simple bees, bumblebees feel great in cold weather and during precipitation. They are able to collect valuable nectar even during rain, while honey bees sit in hives, waiting for good weather.

The bumblebee has excellent eyesight and feels comfortable during the hours of darkness.
That is why, once in a greenhouse or flying into your house, he will not knock his head on the glass, but will try to find a way out himself.
In addition, these insects work up to five times faster than ordinary honey bees and produce honey that is unique in taste and benefits.
But the taste of bumblebee honey remains a mystery to most people.

Another undoubted advantage of bumblebees is their unique color. They look very beautiful and serve as a real decoration of the fauna of our country.
To date, fifteen species of bumblebees are listed in the Red Book. Most of it got into it over the past few years.

TYPES OF Bumblebees.

Top row - earthen, stone, horse,
second row - underground, garden, urban,
third row - field, steppe, moss.

SHMELYOVNIKI
(houses for bumblebees)
You can make a house for bumblebees yourself from improvised materials.

*

In the spring, install a house and the bumblebees will delight you with their work in your garden.
giving you delicious and healing honey!!!

*
*

Unlike bees, bumblebees do not require care - they do not sting and will delight you and your neighbors with their presence!

For the winter, bumblebees fly away from the bumblebee, but in the spring they will definitely return if the bumblebee is made correctly and they are comfortable there.

Bumblebee honey is not a business, it is food for the soul!!!

Forced settlement of the shmelevnik.

Catch a bumblebee queen in the evening.
A fertilized uterus is easy to recognize by two stripes!

*

Insert the test tube into the bumblebee entrance and cover with foil. Remove the vial early in the morning and check the bumblebee for colonization two days later. There should be obvious changes in the nest, if there are no changes, repeat the settlement.

Another forced settlement can be done like this:
In the evening, catch the bumblebee queen (it should not have pollen on its hind legs), carefully wrap it in a piece of napkin and put it in the nest of the bumblebee house.

Bumblebee queens can be forcibly populated until June 15!!!

If the bumblebees have not settled, do not despair. At the beginning of July, in the evening, come to the edge of the field, preferably near a river or lake, look carefully and listen to nature.
You will definitely find a nest of bumblebees!!!

Dig it up, put it in a bag, wait until the working bumblebees fly into it. Then put in the bumblebee house.
In the morning, open the notch and admire the industrious life of bumblebees!!!

HOUSE FOR Bumblebees.

Bumblebees differ from honey bees in that their colonies exist for only one season.
In early spring, female bumblebees come out of the turf where they hibernated and slowly fly above the ground, looking for a place to nest, preference is given to warmed rodent burrows.

The lid of the house is removable. Inside the walls and bottom of the house, they cover with loose cotton wool, tow, hay from an old bird or mouse nest.
The location of the house-hive for bumblebees will be prompted by female bumblebees looking for a place to nest in April-May-June.
It can be any cozy, not damp corner of the garden. Having arranged a small nest, the female carries the pollen of spring honey plants there, builds a wax "pot" at the entrance and fills it with honey. Having laid eggs, the female warms them with her warmth. Working bumblebees emerge from the larvae.

By the end of summer, young females hatch, they scatter and mate.
Pay attention to late honey plants in autumn - you can see male bumblebees on them. They can be taken with bare hands - the males do not have a sting, and the perfumery smell that attracts females is well felt.

It is necessary to protect the hive from ants that can enter the house. In winter or early spring, clean and disinfect the bumblebee hive house, lay in new soft litter.

Due to the threat of extinction of bumblebees, people have developed artificial nests in which the insects should presumably want to set up their hives. Alas, the vast majority of artificial houses are ignored by bumblebees.

Over the past half century, intensive agricultural activity has greatly damaged the habitat of pollinating insects, which included butterflies, bees and bumblebees. The situation with bumblebees is so serious that the UK government has even provided funds for several projects to prevent the decrease in the population of these insects.

Since one of the main reasons for the decline in the number of bumblebees is the disappearance of nesting sites, it was decided to develop artificial nests, a sort of analogue of bird nesting boxes. No sooner said than done: the houses were designed, tested, found to be effective and sent to mass production. But there was a "hiccup". Researchers at the University of Stirling have been evaluating the attractiveness of commercial nests for bumblebees for four years and have concluded that their effectiveness tends to zero.

The story with bumblebees began in the 1950s, and cages for these insects were tested three times in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada and the USA - in the 50s, 60s and early 80s. The nests showed high efficiency, in 30-50% of cases the bumblebees used the proposed premises for nesting. But since then, says research team leader Dave Goulson, bumblebee numbers have declined significantly. Thirty years ago there were 10 times more of them, which could be the reason for such a high efficiency of artificial dwellings.

The scientists tested 736 nests; some of them were commercial goods, and some were the work of gardeners. The attractiveness of the houses was evaluated in the gardens and farms of southern England and central Scotland. Alas, the bumblebees liked only 23 nests out of 736. According to the researchers, it would be easier to purchase flower seeds and plant them in plots: this would attract insects much more effectively than nest boxes.

Scientists have tried to figure out what features a finished bumblebee house must have in order for the insects to approve it. The task was hampered by the fact that not much is known about this side of the life of bumblebees, so some of the mistakes made by the designers were caused by the lack of reliable information about the personal life of insects. And yet, scientists are ready to give gardeners and farmers some advice of varying degrees of obviousness. First, when a queen bumblebee is looking for a nest, she first looks for a suitable place from the air, then lands and inspects holes and holes in the ground - which means that insects will leave a birdhouse with a side entrance unattended. Similarly, bumblebees will prefer ground or underground nests to those hanging from a tree. (A couple of bumblebee species in the British Isles favor ordinary wooden birdhouses, but, ironically, the insects prefer to nest in bird boxes rather than special "bumblebee nests".) rough for insects. It is better to use dry moss, upholstery cotton or hair felt.

All this, of course, does not negate the need, if possible, not to disturb the relief of the soil surface in the nesting places of bumblebees: not a single man-made nest can replace a natural home for bumblebees. If we continue to plow the land for crops, it may turn out that there will be no one to pollinate them ...

“Of course, we won’t be able to show you the entire technological process,” Ivan Klimko, the head of the workshop for the production of bumblebees and pollination of agricultural crops, immediately warns us at the entrance to the laboratory. – This is a know-how, a trade secret of our company.

The laboratory is quite small: a one-story house with several rooms. During the year, up to 2.5 thousand bumblebee families are born here: 1,700 of which go to the needs of the agricultural complex itself, and only the remaining couple of hundred are sold to other Belarusian enterprises.

I must say that this business is very successful: profitability is over one hundred percent.

- One bumblebee family (70 - 80 individuals) costs from 60 to 90 dollars. Previously, our company also had to buy them. And now we do everything ourselves, imagine what a savings it is! This is a lot of money, which is why we have to keep the technology a secret,” explains Ivan Klimko.

The need for bumblebees for pollination of agricultural crops in all of Belarus is about 7 thousand families. Today, the right amount has to be purchased abroad: in Holland, Belgium, Israel, Spain. To prevent foreign currency from being exported, the agricultural complex plans to build another laboratory, much larger than the existing one.

“The foundation and walls are already in place,” Ivan Klimko replies. – But it’s hard to give an exact date: we are building it with our own money, and the authorities decide where to spend the funds at the moment.

“Bumblebees increase the yield by almost a third!”

– The bumblebee is mainly used for pollination of crops in greenhouses. When pollinated by bumblebees, the marketable appearance of the product, palatability improves, the fruits are better preserved, and the yield increases by 25-30%. Previously, manual labor was used for this.

- Why specifically grow bumblebees, if bees can pollinate?

– Bumblebees work 7-8 times faster than bees. And they do not require special care, they do not need to be constantly checked, fed, like bees. The bumblebee is not aggressive, it flies in low light and low temperatures, and bumblebees do not fly away from the greenhouse as quickly as bees, the specialist says.

Bumblebees can pollinate almost any crop: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and more. At the agricultural complex, they are even used for pollination of the orchard: the cherry plum blooms early, and the bees do not fly yet at this time - it is cold. Bumblebee families in greenhouses are updated twice a month, and the full working capacity of one family is two months. After the expiration date, the family is disposed of, however, almost all bumblebees scatter or die in two months - and only boxes with empty nests remain for disposal.

"Bumblebees Grow in the Red Light Room"

Of all the 30 species of bumblebees that are found in Belarus, only one has succumbed to domestication - the earthen bumblebee. It is this species that is produced in the laboratory. In principle, the entire algorithm for growing bumblebee colonies in the laboratory is almost completely copied from the process of their natural development in nature. True, in the laboratory this process is year-round and faster. It all starts in the spring, when laboratory staff go out into the countryside with nets and catch bumblebees.

“We travel to different regions of Belarus to find new “blood,” says Svetlana Dzhigero, head of the laboratory. - We need them to create more and more new families: if close mating begins, the species degenerates, bumblebees from such families work very poorly.

The captured queens are then quarantined and taken to the "marriage room" to mate with the drones. Then the uterus must mature, the process of aging of the body must go through. In nature, this period lasts about six months, and in the laboratory it has been accelerated to two months.

When 5 - 6 bumblebees have hatched, they begin to help the uterus raise a family, and the task of that one is simply to lay eggs. But correspondents of Komsomolskaya Pravda are shown only the first, marriage stage and the last - the process of growth and development of the family. Everything in between is a trade secret. The bumblebee family grows in 4 to 5 months.

The room where families grow up is lit with red light. With such lighting, the workers explain, the bumblebee does not see anything and does not fly - it is safer to work with it. The bumblebee family should grow to 60 - 80 individuals, and then it goes for sale or to the greenhouse of the agricultural complex. Now there are about fifty containers with bumblebees on the tables:

“It was you who came at the wrong time, we are now in a recession, we are engaged in breeding work,” the laboratory workers joke. - The hot season starts somewhere in February, then we have everything filled with these containers.

“Sometimes they bite us 10 times a day”

In the laboratory, not counting the chief, only five specialists work - all young girls. In Belarusian universities, although there is a specialty "beekeeping", they do not teach how to breed bumblebees. Therefore, the team, on its own, using a few books and manuals, by trial and error, had to build a technology for the production of beneficial insects in the laboratory from scratch on its own.

- You can't see it anywhere. In Belarus, no one does this, and in European laboratories they won’t let us go beyond the threshold - everything is classified everywhere, ”Ivan Klimko admits.

Each laboratory room has its own microclimate. Special equipment is installed everywhere, which maintains a constant temperature and humidity in the room - this is how they try to recreate the natural living conditions of bumblebees. For example, in the "marriage room" it is quite fresh and cool, and in the next room, where bumblebee families grow, it is hot and there is a very specific smell: here, as laboratory assistants explain, it smells of bumblebee pheromones.

– Bumblebees are very sensitive to temperature changes. If something goes wrong, we immediately see. They will start building roofs on their nests when they are cold. And when it's hot, there is a loud buzzing in the room - they are actively fanning their wings, they are chasing the air like that, - says Svetlana Jigero, head of the laboratory, about the behavior of bumblebees.

“Is your job dangerous in general?” Do they bite often? I ask the entire small team.

- Yes, bumblebees jump out, pounce, sting ... And this happens quite often. If you actively work with the tribe, then they can bite 10 times a day, - says the leading technologist of the laboratory, Elena Gorelik. - And bumblebees bite more painfully than bees. We endure, it hurts, it's a shame. But you have to work!

The first farm for breeding bumblebees for pollination opened in Ukraine. As its founders explain, bumblebees are much better suited for pollination in greenhouses, as well as in gardens and berry fields, than bees. And in general, a bumblebee has only one drawback compared to a bee - it does not give honey.

The first experience of bumblebee breeding in Ukraine

For two years now, the first and so far the only bumblebee farm in Ukraine has been operating in the village of Muzychi near Kyiv. Although it does not resemble a farm at all, it is more like a laboratory: staff in white coats and shoe covers, small clean rooms, most of which precisely maintain the set temperature. Of the 13 employees of the farm, 3 are scientists. And only when you lean towards the wooden boxes do you hear a quiet buzz. These bumblebees build pollen nests in which the queen lays her eggs.

Some of the production processes here are exactly the same as on livestock farms. First, the farm workers push their "wards" to mate. When the laboratory assistants see that the insects have found a mate and are actively breeding, they quickly remove them from the common swarm with tweezers and place them in special gardens: two drones per queen. The girls admit that although the drones do not bite, they receive up to 7 bites a day from the queens. Also for the "livestock" feed is prepared daily.

Bumblebees for pollination are fed with protein and carbohydrate foods. The first includes dough from pollen of early flowering, which is bought from beekeepers. Carbohydrates - invert sugar, but always with additives of their own recipe, which is kept secret.

Breeding bumblebees for pollination

Fertilized queens are placed in a refrigerator at zero temperature for 3 months, imitating winter for them: such a period of rest is physiologically necessary. During this period, part of the queens die (on this farm - every fourth) - the law of nature, according to which the strongest survive. Gradually born, working individuals build sacs from pollen, into which the queen throws brood. When the bumblebee colony reaches a large number, on average 8 months after the fertilization of the uterus, it is transplanted into wooden hives: 60 individuals each if bumblebees are used in greenhouses, and 120 each for open ground.

It was the greenhouses, or rather, those who use the biological method of plant protection, that became one of the first buyers of bumblebee hives in the Zhiva Kraina agro-research fund. Biological methods of protecting vegetables in greenhouses make it possible to use them as insect pollinators due to the rejection of chemical insecticides. And the use of insects makes it possible to grow bee-pollinated hybrids of cucumbers, which are significantly tastier than self-pollinated ones. In addition, as it turned out, bumblebees are much better pollinators for cucumbers than bees. Especially for greenhouses.

The fact is that in greenhouses, especially in film ones, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich in our country is several times larger than the area of ​​glass ones, in winter and in March the temperature can drop sharply in accordance with temperature fluctuations outside. This is where the bumblebee becomes indispensable, which flies "to work" already at a temperature of 7-8 ° C, while a bee - only at 12 ° C, and, unlike a bee, works in cloudy weather. And on a tomato there is no alternative to a bumblebee at all: the flower of this plant does not accumulate nectar, therefore, it is not at all interesting for a bee.

What is attractive breeding bumblebees for pollination

Bumblebees were bought not only by greenhouses. This insect is much more interesting than a bee for gardeners due to the fact that it flies in both cool and cloudy weather. A very valuable bumblebee for pollination for producers of such profitable crops as blueberries (the bee almost does not pollinate them) or pumpkin, the flower of which blooms for only a few hours, and if the weather is unfavorable for the flight of bees at this time, then without a bumblebee it remains an empty flower.

Of particular importance is the quality of pollination for pumpkin - gymnosperms, oilseeds, which is mainly grown for export. In this case, the number of seeds depends on pollination. According to Bohdan Maznitsky, bumblebees are also necessary for such a profitable crop as sunflower. “It is better when several pollinating insects work on a sunflower field at once: bees, bumblebees, and osmia. The bumblebee is needed here because it is larger than a bee, therefore it carries more pollen on itself, and more flowers fly around in one flight - up to a thousand. This synergistic pollination on sunflower has been shown in European studies to increase oilseed yields by 100-500%,” he explains. True, in the latter case, the results are influenced by the sunflower variety and the density of the hives (there should be at least 9 bumblebee colonies per hectare).

Why bumblebees are better than bees

A bumblebee is better than a bee in that it is hairy (pollen clings to it more), is not distracted by nectar, is not picky (whereas a bee, having found the best honey plant nearby, switches to it), flies far enough and flies to a flower exactly when it needs it. pollinator.

Recently, another plus of the bumblebee has appeared: it does not die out en masse, unlike bees. All this makes the bumblebee a more efficient pollinator than the bee. Especially for berry crops, fruit and greenhouses. For example, pollination of raspberries by bumblebees in the Kyiv cooperative last year gave a yield increase of 30% and increased profits by 20%. “Raspberries can have their own apiary, where there are up to 50 thousand bees in each hive, and still bumblebees do 60% of pollination,” adds Bogdan Maznitsky.

For greenhouses, you need 6 hives with bumblebees per hectare, for a start - at least 3-4, for berry plantations - 6-12 each, and on blueberry plantations, some install 15 hives per hectare. Until recently, they all bought bumblebees from European companies. And they complained that the cost of hives is significantly higher than in the producing country. In addition, the transportation of bumblebees across Europe with the passage of customs was a lot of stress for insects. The domestic manufacturer can fulfill the order promptly. The main thing is that the domestic producer uses local bumblebees (the source material was caught in the fields of various regions), better adapted to our climate.

Without pollination of flowers, plants will not bear fruit. No strawberries, no apple and pear, and no juicy and fragrant cucumbers and tomatoes. This requires insects in the garden. Children know this, they are taught this at school. But in adulthood, only gardeners mostly think about this.

Garden bumblebee (young queen)

However, bees disappear in nature, so ecologists try to explain that keeping wild lone bees near housing is not a problem, and even a great benefit. However, there are not many pollinating insects in the garden. But bees alone will not be able to pollinate everything around, because, for example, they do not fly in the rain.

Male bumblebee

Bumblebees pollinate in both rain and cold weather.

You may be surprised, but such bee "cubs" are bumblebees, more effective pollinators than bees. They will also cope with long narrow flowers, which the bees cannot reach with their proboscis. And also, unlike bees, they fly from flower to flower both in rain and in cool spring weather, when the bees do not want to fly out of the hive yet. But it is in the spring that the harvest of fruit trees is laid.

Garden bumblebee uterus

There is no need to be afraid of bumblebees. These are good-natured people who do not attack themselves. And there are about 300 species of them in the world. Approximately half of the species can live in a hive that a person will put in his garden, in a meadow or on the edge of a forest. The hive must of course meet the needs of the bumblebee and must mimic its natural habitation. Unfortunately, natural places suitable for bumblebee nests are becoming less and less.

Nest of a young bumble bee queen

Empty bumblebee nest in autumn

How to properly care for bumblebees.

Queen mother.

Female bumblebees hibernate in the ground, and in the summer, already as young queens, they create their own nest. Compared to worker bumblebees, the female is distinguished by its size and coloration, even a non-specialist will see this. It is assumed that only every tenth will survive the winter, fatal for female bumblebees is the spring burning of grass and fires.

A bumblebee is looking for a suitable place to nest.

Males, called as bees - drones (drones), are always smaller than the queen queen of this species, but larger than worker bumblebees. Often they differ from the female and workers in a brighter color or fluffiness. Shortly after birth, they leave their nest or hive forever.

Peter Dobry, for whom bumblebees have become a life passion and work, chooses these young bumblebees for the new hive, which are now looking for a place to lay a new nest in the spring. You can recognize them because the female bumblebee flies low to the ground and examines every hole in the ground to make a new nest for this year.

"The female will either find a prepared hive herself, or you can send her there," says Peter. "This means carefully moving her to a prepared hive, placed in a suitable spot in the shade. Wait half an hour, then open the entry hole so that the female has the opportunity to fly away if she does not like it there." - Peter advises how to act correctly when luring bumblebees into a new hive. "This is a free-living and protected species, you can not enslave it. The bumblebee must decide where he will live."

Ceramic hive for bumblebees

If, after the female flew out of the hive, she began to circle over it, this is a good sign. "This means that she is studying its location so that she can return to it. From my experience, every fourth attempt to populate the hive is successful," says Peter.

Spacious wooden bumblebee hive. At the bottom left is the entrance, at the top left is an opening for ventilation, covered with a mesh from the inside.

You can make such a hive yourself, or you can buy ready-made in specialized stores. In fact, this is a wooden box with an entrance hole, from which a curved corridor leads, imitating the entrance to a mouse hole. Needs a ventilation hole that can be opened in high heat. Prefabricated hives have an entrance guard that protects the hive from bumblebee pests.

The tube imitates the natural entrance to an abandoned mouse hole

The inside of the hive should be lined with a suitable natural material such as raw cotton, wool, or pieces of cotton mixed with dry moss.

"Bumblebees use this material to build a nest, they bite off pieces and chew, which is impossible if there are artificial materials in the hive." Peter explains.

Actually, nothing more is needed, the bumblebees will find everything else themselves. In autumn, the female queen will leave the hive, workers and drones will die. Only the female queen will survive the winter by burrowing into the ground. And we need to clean the hive and prepare it for next year.