Breeding of osmium bees. Osmia rufa, cornuta, hives

Community and Forum → Insects biology and faunistics → Breeding of osmium bees. Osmia rufa, cornuta, hives

osmia, 07.02.2016 23:45

Osmium bee
This little fluffy bee is beautiful, peaceful and very useful.
What is its usefulness? It is an excellent pollinator of flowers, and it does not matter whether ornamental plants or fruit plants, the presence of pollen and nectar is important. The bee prepares parchment for its offspring – one portion for one larva, which, after eating almost everything, pupates, and waits for spring. In spring, when the environment warms up to +8 0 C, they begin to leave their cocoons, empty, and at +12 0 C they are already looking for food. At this time, fruit trees – cherries, apricots-begin to slowly bloom. With warming up above +14 0 C, ordinary honeybees also appear, but they are not visible in the evening, unlike osmias.
It is safe to say that bumblebees are the best of all. You can't argue with this – it is such a pollinator that even in frost, the bumblebee crawls or sits on a flower, humming softly for self-heating. Probably no insect at such low temperatures, fine rain will not climb to the flowers… But there is a drawback-they are very unpretentious to the content. I tried for 2 years to get them on my site-unsuccessfully.
Local osmia by nature live in old wood, gnawing holes in it. During their short life, they lay 4-6 eggs, separating them with partitions of earth or clay, and the entrance itself is also closed with a double earthen "plug". Watching the process of gnawing the house – I can say that this is a long and hard work for bees. Therefore, you can see how bees fly and look into every hole in wood, bricks (I myself saw nests in: logs, cut raspberries, bark beetles, window seals, ventilation holes in window and door frames, thin hoses and pipes, in spare parts from motors, in keyholes).
The most optimal construction for housing osmia is ocheret (reed) or thick straw. The presence of a pre-prepared house made of such material creates conditions for a significant increase in the offspring of bees and a greater collection of pollen. The bee spends a little time cleaning the ocheretyan tube, and devotes more time to harvesting parchment and offspring. One female will be able to fill 2-3 tubes with 7-10 chambers in each.
As the observation shows, for local osmia, the optimal diameter of the tubes is 8-12 mm. If you take an outline of a larger diameter-the bees are thicker, they will not be any more, they need more time to create partitions and more land on the lid. And the larvae pupating will lie across the tube. If you take a smaller diameter, smaller, thinner bees will settle there, and also summer osmias, but many predatory wasps will live next to them. These wasps do not eat bees and do not steal parchment, they eat spiders, larvae of colorads, small flies and caterpillars. Therefore, when sorting through their houses, I sort them into a separate box, and in the spring I will place them at the other end of the plot.
Bees have diseases and parasites. Mites-suck fluids out of bees, shortening their life. When cutting the tube, a reddish-gray lump comes across, which begins to decompose at a plus temperature. Looking through a microscope-you can see a typical tick - parasite of insects, but the number is frightening – about a thousand! Usually these creatures are located in the middle or at the exit of the tube, and every bee that comes out is infected with them. Later, when mating and creating a nest, the parasites infect the offspring and partners.
Flies-eat parchment, can kill the larva.
Riders-kill 100% Trogoderma granarium larva
– feed on perga reserves.
The life span of an osmium is short, ranging from 3 weeks to 2 months. The first to leave are large and fluffy red-bellied osmias, and by mid-summer they are invisible.
user posted image

Osmi growing. video materials.
manufacturing of fabre reed beehives

This post was edited by osmia - 07.02.2016 23: 58

Comments

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08.02.2016 14:32, Hierophis

We also grow another type/subspecies of cane - altissimus, so it really has a tube diameter of about 2 cm, I made several dozen knees from such a reed. Osmia on the balcony settle at my place, they turn regularly in search of holes, one osmia made a hole herself in the wall of the bee hive.
Notching of translucency - so tubes are typed in packages, I typed 50-70 in one bundle.
Of course, I made bundles with different pipe diameters, from 16mm to 6mm inside, but I did not seal the bottom with plaster or earth, but cut the stem after the partition, as a result, my tubes turned out to be long.

+ for wasps, I made holes in the wooden deck.

osmia, you probably also live near the World Cup since there is a tall reed with a thick base? It still has such thick walls and a height of up to 7m happens?

And if it is not enough, they may not settle at all, if they are not hooked there. Although I had an empty hive in one place for one year, and the next-hundreds of tubes were completely clogged by osmia, the species was Osmia caerulescens, which is useless to populate - it flies away. And if Osmia bicornis (=rufa) is moved in , it will definitely nest, but it is earlier.

Vo vo, we have onevrnoe here are-Osmia bicornis and fly, because they appear very early. I even regret that I didn't think to cut the tubes

earlier, because the Eumenids also settled in osmia

08.02.2016 16:03, osmia

https://yandex.ua/maps/-/CVDlQPzS this is a place of thick reeds. It is about 3m high and has a wall thickness of 2 mm. There the whole bank is overgrown with it.
I want to move it to Teschino Lake, because it grows very small there, and there is practically nothing to cut.
Here is the question, is it necessary to dig it out with roots, or will it multiply by seeds? and how much you need to grow these greens.
I put plaster or earth over the pipe trimmings(remnants from the main ones), there are very long knees, and I try to make pipes of the same length with a tolerance of + - 10 mm.
It was a pity to throw away these segments, so I decided to use them, since there are so many of them.
For wasps and small osmias, I twist separately bundles of thin stems that remain when collecting the main hives. In the main hives go tubes with a diameter of 7 to 10 mm, all that is thinner-separately and even in a separate place on the site, so as not to get confused with each other under the wings.
By the way, I found pipes with sucked Colorado potato beetles and spiders. See and such there are wasps, it would be necessary to look and breed such.

08.02.2016 16:32, Hierophis

Strange reed, we usually have, if the base is thick, then the reed is high, and thick more or less evenly along its greater length. They make fishing rods out of it and carry 200-300g of carp.

After all, what's the matter here, about breeding-is it a different species/subspecies, or are the conditions just favorable there, but there are no mothers-in-law's lake? I do not know what he needs, but in general the height of the reed and the age of the growth points depends on the age, in those places where the growth is young, the reed is thin and generally low, where the "age-old thickets" there are thick stems. Because if it's the latter, then a transplant won't help. Cane generally reproduces well with seeds, eventually appears in places where it did not grow before, but vegetatively-it needs to be carefully transplanted somehow, I don't know here, I didn't do

08.02.2016 17:15, osmia

I think this is a kind of cane. because the river is one, and there are different stems behind the dams. I'll cut the "panicle" and shake it out on the bank of the right place, and at the same time I'll pull out a couple of rhizomes, transplant them, and see what happens.
Why did I tie it up and glue it together - I was too lazy to go to the beach. Earlier, I split the tube, took the cocoons, tubes with parasites in the trash.
I read the articles of "proFFesorov" - no one cleaned anything, and after 5-10 years the hives were simply thrown away.
If reeds can be chopped, paper ones can be unwound, prefabricated ones made of milled boards can be disassembled, then you can't process a wooden bar or deck with anything.
https://youtu.be/gXTiDmtQ20U?t=21s at 21 seconds, the pad is visible with the year before last's filling, I can say that last year in the early spring all the holes were clogged, later all hatched and the holes "walked". And now-7 holes are closed, did you not like the rest?
https://youtu.be/pbjAkMMeKDo?t=26s this pad has been hanging for 4 years, and the occupancy rate is getting worse every year. Zzedu on site and pick up, I will carefully chisel prick-see what's wrong there.
Conclusion: a new clean "house" will be populated faster and better.

This post was edited by osmia-08.02.2016 17: 16

08.02.2016 21:41, Кархарот

As for the update , I thought just to prepare new bundles every end of the season, in theory then located next to the old ones, they will be populated

Yes.

choose healthy pupae and leave them in some container in early spring.

For bees, everything is simple. You open the tube, the cocoons can be slightly incised and see what is there - they hibernate at the imago stage. Parasites can be selected separately in test tubes. And close the nests with cocoons back, even if there are cracks, and tie them in a bundle, and then wrap them with paper and tie them up in the spring to a new bundle (store not in a heated room). If the nests are thrown out and only cocoons are left, the re-population rate will be lower. Also, if there's a tick, you'll have to burn everything. And yet, not all osmia bees are tied to the place of hatching, some fly away.
Wasps (and some bees) are more difficult to deal with, as they overwinter as larvae. They need to put each nest in a test tube and plug it with cotton wool (tightly), and already tie the test tubes in a bundle. Open strictly before the imago leaves, otherwise melittobia will eat everyone. But most of the operating systems are not tied to the breeding site, so you can simply take them out of the test tubes and release them as they come out.

Because gluing old tubes together is difficult and tedious

And for nothing.

And if you do not clear the parasites, then I do not know, in theory, given the stationarity of the nests, maybe over time for several seasons such a stable population of parasites will develop, as with etitm in Fabre hives, I do not know if they are updated or not?

Melittobia are also terrible for osmia ticks of chetodactylus. If they accumulate in a couple of years , you need to throw out all the old bundles. Other parasites do not make special weather, on the contrary, they are interesting.

08.02.2016 21:50, Кархарот

We do this: when the lake freezes, we go out on the ice with a shovel( shovel), hit it on the "base" of the stems sticking out of the ice, and they fall. We collect armfuls, tie them up, and load them onto the car. Then, when it's no longer freezing outside, we water the armful with a hose. Raw cane is easily cut with an ordinary knife, if you hold it obliquely at the internode. Moreover, it is better to cut over the internode (each). The resulting segments will have a rounded bottom, which the bees prefer. Then we take these segments, place everything on the table, cut to one side and align it along the open cut. Then we just take as much as fits in the palm of your hand and tie it up. The resulting bundles can then be linked together. For the bundle, we use women's tights, cut into rings, two rings are enough for each bundle. That's all the equipment. Yes, I take off the leaves, except when I'm too lazy. By the way, if you cut as I wrote, then they are removed easier than ever, since they are not fixed. They don't give you any heat, of course, and they don't give you any shade, either. But they interfere later when parsing. The fact is that before parsing, I mark the upper side of each tube, and on the leaves the pencil is not very taken. And to make it darker for the bees, you can wrap the bundle with dark paper. By the way, not all species like shade, Osmia bicornis more often inhabits shaded areas, and O. cornuta-no difference.

This post was edited by Carcharot - 08.02.2016 22: 14

Likes: 1

08.02.2016 22:41, Hierophis

Yes, not everything, as it turned out, is rosy, mites and melittobia, I probably haven't seen them before, look like small ant queens

I didn't clean the leaves just because I was too lazy to clean them, even at the beginning I started doing it, because I thought that some animals might settle there, but I got tired of it. I sawed with a hacksaw on metal near the internode itself, it cuts very easily, of course, but you don't need to rush much

, as a result, the length of the tubes I had was equal to the length of my knees, I aligned them at the open ends, so it turned out to be a chaotic pile on the closed side, but it was very difficult to connect, thanks for the idea with tights) I tied up a lot of tubes in my arms, so I couldn't wrap my arms around them, and yet, yes, I came up with a binding method.. elastic bands from underpants )))
And it turns out that I cut under the internodes, so that the leaves all remained in their places. By the way, it is easier to connect with the leaves, the tubes are not so scattered on the sides )

In general, it would be necessary to cut another 200 pieces of tubes, but I don't know how the old cane will be cut with a hacksaw, it will probably crack.

08.02.2016 23:27, Кархарот

Why mark it?
I want to mark several females with a different color, so that later I can see which tube her offspring are in and how much she will populate. Worth a try?

Mark it so that later, when the bundle is untied and the tubes fall apart, you know where the top is so that you can open it from above. After all, it is better not to split in half, but to shoot somewhere 2/5 of the diameter, and preferably from above (for my purposes this is important, for yours - maybe not, then the label is certainly not needed).

It is worth marking females when you set a specific goal, what you want to learn new. For example, does the size of the female (you need to weigh it before marking it) affect the preferences in the diameter of the tubes, etc. (I can say that it practically does not affect, although the largest ones will certainly not fit into the tubes that can be populated with the smallest ones, but starting from the minimum diameter for the largest ones, the correlation zero). But for O. bicornis, almost all such observations have already been made by S. P. Ivanov in the Crimea. But you can just mark and see where each one lives, of course, if only for the sake of having something to spend your free time on.

08.02.2016 23:42, Кархарот

I didn't clean the leaves just because I was too lazy to clean them, even at the beginning I started doing it, because I thought that some animals might settle there, but I got tired of it. I sawed with a hacksaw on metal near the internode itself, it cuts very easily, of course, but you don't need to rush much , as a result, the length of the tubes I had was equal to the length of my knees, I aligned them at the open ends, so it turned out to be a chaotic pile on the closed side, but it was very difficult to connect, thanks for the idea with tights) I tied up a lot of tubes in my arms, so I couldn't wrap my arms around them, and yet, yes, I came up with a binding method.. elastic bands from underpants )))
And it turns out that I cut under the internodes, so that the leaves all remained in their places. By the way, it is easier to connect with the leaves, the tubes are not so scattered on the sides )

In general, it would be necessary to cut another 200 pieces of tubes, but I don't know how the old cane will be cut with a hacksaw, it will probably crack.

A knife is much faster. A kitchen knife will do, but it should be sharpened, not very bent and not with a convex blade (preferably slightly concave near the base from repeated sharpening), and the reed should be wet. It is necessary to push not forward, but to hold the knife across, pressing tightly, but not "forcibly". It is convenient to place the stem with its tip, cut the first piece (for disposal), cut the rest into a box, and put the top in the trash. Then you can get it out of the mailbox and sort it. In this way, we cut thousands of pipes in a day.
And the elastic band from underpants costs money, and used tights are free if there is a mother/sister/wife/mother-in-law/girlfriend/grandmother/aunt, etc.The point is that they stretch, and the bundle will not break up with possible drying in the summer, as it would be if you knit it with a simple rope.
The chaotic jumble on the reverse side turns into a newspaper, and sometimes I still have eumenes or sceliphron kurvatum living under it...
By the way, it is important that the bundle is quite dense, because the loose birds fall apart in a moment and peck at all the pipes. And so they can only spoil the outer tubes. And if you wrap them in newspaper, they usually don't touch them either.

09.02.2016 0:58, Кархарот

How much one bee produces on average depends heavily on the food supply, which in turn is determined by the weather and competitors for pollen (the same honey bee). When there are a lot of flowers and no competitors, there are more offspring, and vice versa. I can't say the exact numbers, but it can be 10 or 30 (in different places and/or in different years). And it is also important that when the food supply is scarce, there are more males in the offspring (up to 80%). And with a good feed base, the sex ratio is about 1 to 1.

Of course, if you remove parasites, the number will grow as long as there are free tubes, even with a small food base, since there will be more offspring than "parents". In a good year (with abundant flowering) it will grow faster, but here already, as luck would have it.

This post was edited by Carcharot - 09.02.2016 01: 00

09.02.2016 1:11, Hierophis

By the way, if you cut as I wrote, then they are removed easier than ever, since they are not fixed. They don't give you any heat, of course, and they don't give you any shade, either.

And you, too, do not dress in winter)))

After all, sheet wrappers not only hold the tubes more tightly, but also fill the cracks, there is no such blowing that would be without sheet wrappers.

But I wonder if there is any research on the flight radius for these osmias? I mean, how far do they tend to fly for food?

As for the old holes in the decks, in which osmia do not settle, they can in theory be cleaned, if not with the same drill as they were drilled, then with a metal bar. But the drill is better-the drill twists all the dirt out

09.02.2016 8:44, Hierophis

Clothing does not generate heat, but reduces the loss of heat generated by the human body. Do sleeping bees generate heat? Besides, hiding from the cold in a reed stalk covered with a leaf is like hiding behind a wooden wall covered with a newspaper.

"Clothing" not only reduces heat loss, but also helps to mitigate temperature changes. In this case, I explained my version of the use of wrappers - these are the minimum gaps between the tubes, and respectively. no draft in these crevices. + tubules are not just wintering grounds. When feeding the larvae begins, softening the differences will also be useful to them, although the larvae also do not emit much heat

, this may have a minimal effect, but such trifles add up to the overall effect..

Here are the same polistas as lagged behind life-their nest is open, the slightest difference in T is felt(probably the maximum of their species in warm regions is not for nothing), and the nests of dolichovespul, although they can also be hung up openly, are covered with a shell, and these wasps are found even in Estonia, and the number is not comparable, some advantage this wrapper explicitly gives)

10.02.2016 23:32, Кархарот

Of course, the leaves give shade. After all, it is easier to test this experimentally, and it is also purely speculative. On the other hand, if you plan to do a darker wrap with dark paper, it doesn't matter. But after all, paper also costs money, and the leaves are attached to the cane completely free of charge. Does the pencil stick better on the "polished" surface of the stem than on rough leaves? It's hard to believe. Or is it not a pencil at all, but a marker on alcohol?

Rough leaves fall apart by autumn, so you can't write anything on them. And sometimes it is necessary to mark not only the top, but also other data, if a socket is found in the tube, I write on it the number of the beam, the date of installation and removal, etc. You can of course remove the leaves before that, or you can do it in advance. In short, it is more convenient for anyone, you can do both, there will not be much difference.

Carcharoth, you're making Fabre hives with such volumes

I haven't done much in recent years. Previously, I put about a hundred bundles on attraction (without replanting) in different places (in groups of 3-10 pcs. in each item). Now I put about 20 a year specifically on the species I need, and I have a large "hive" in the yard, where I then try to move them.

Did you see Grebennikov's EPS?

No, it's not for me.

This post was edited by Carcharot - 10.02.2016 23: 33

10.02.2016 23:59, Кархарот

Please advise what plants to plant on the site so that there is more food for bees.

For spring osmias, any entomophilic ones that bloom during their summer are suitable, and even some wind-pollinated ones (walnut, sycamore).

what kind of parasites ate the osmium? there are two on the right - these are gray flies.

Cacoxenos is on the right, and Monodontomerus is probably on the left.

and these are the larvae of a predator wasp (some kind of spider trap)

Not true, this is a nest of Euodynerus, and they are "crawlers". Although there are spiders in the first cell, so it belongs to Trypoxylon (look, they even have different partitions). It often happens that an abandoned nest of one species is populated by another (in this case, Trypoxylon apparently did not even lay an egg, since the spiders remained).

I don't even know what to say about a pissing hamster...

This post was edited by Carcharot - 02/11/2016 00: 02

Likes: 2

11.02.2016 1:28, ИНО

Dozens of times made various nests for bumblebees (including underground), never had fun. There is too much competition from shelters of natural origin. It is probably easier to start bumblebee families by trapping queens, the technique has long been worked out and described in detail in the literature, but pollen is needed, and fresh. Last year's (or maybe even a post-some year) bee leg sold in the markets, bumblebees are slightly less than completely ignored, which is not to be done with it.

In my opinion, the most useful plant for osmium, and for all early spring bees (and wasps, too) - entomophilic species of willows (in the common people - "willow"). In our country, they are very rare, only in culture, and during flowering, bees simply stick to them:

And this is a female plant, on the male one there are even more insects (due to pollen). Interestingly, the honey bee flies around these trees side by side, therefore, it does not have competition.

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