It is finally spring in Wisconsin, and the nesting trial hoop house at Arlington Agricultural Research Station is now home to spring bumble bee queens!  Many thanks to the staff at Arlington (Gerry, Jeff, and Shannon), as well as my intrepid fellow grad students (Erin, Jade, and Alden) for their invaluable help in setting up the hoop houses, burying the nests under ground, and catching mama bees. Above, see the crew after installing a mesh cover over the hoop house skeleton to keep the bees inside, and my reaction to having successfully captured a queen bee using the lab's bee vacuum. Now that the first batch of queens has been released into the hoop house, I'll be busy feeding them and monitoring whether any have established colonies in the milk jug nests.

Bumble bees are some of the most  charismatic insects around Madison. However, while bees are a familiar sight on flowers, little is known about the nests they return to every day. This is because many bumble bees nest below ground, where their lives unfold out of sight from curious ecologists. As understanding bumble bee nesting is key to developing pollinator protection plans, I am investigating the nesting preferences of bumble bees. In hoop houses at UW-Madison’s Arlington Agricultural Research Station, spring bumble bee queens will be allowed to choose from an array of possible nests. My aims are to identify whether queens prefer to nest in burrows previously occupied by other bees, and to create a working protocol for researchers to use towards their own bumble bee nesting questions in the future. In an effort to use reclaimed materials, I am constructing nests out of used milk jugs. Community members across Madison have responded to the call, and my porch is swimming in cartons! Over the next few weeks I'll be racing to stuff each box with bedding and insulation. Lots of work to do before the first queens come out of hibernation...

On Saturday, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center hosted a table at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery to teach children (and their parents) about grassland ecosystems and the pollinators who call them home. I had fun giving kids a peek into bumble bee colonies and helping families learn about prairie plants!