Breeding of osmium bees. Osmia rufa, cornuta, hives

I caught a fly today.
Or a parasite or mimic for protection from predators. I made half a hundred eggs in a box. Throw it away or dump it on what?

Volucella bombylans.

What kind of female is this? it squeals like a bumblebee and pours eggs like a machine gun...

I took away the "translucent" hives - the larvae eat and grow. Simultaneously I select parasites. Hives "at work", where bees with ticks were seen, were normally sealed with osmia. I brought it home and opened it - I removed ticks and fly larvae. These larvae gnaw through the partitions and climb into the next cells, eating food while the bee is still alive. And very quickly, so that not every larva can then survive without starving to death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4jPyJ3FAW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ69LNvzasQ
The number of females decreased very much. Only a few bees can be seen near the evidence. Perhaps the time of their lives has come to an end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZh_GhaSGT4
But the village is full of bumblebees. I made a couple more nests, but this time in an abandoned shed. In the same place, a city bumblebee found something woolen in a bag and made a nest - if you pick - it buzzes and scares There are no owners on the site - thickets like in the jungle, many winged birds collect nectar and pollen and fly there.
I saw an anthophore and a big buzz. I haven't seen Antofor in my city, he flies a lot on his site. But I didn't notice where they live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAHlDoqsnqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Ss41FxyQA

Pictures:

IMG_20160508_140344.jpg — (238.83к)


IMG_20160508_141209.jpg — (102.76к)

I also do not see osmium, as a result, two sealed tubes+ another one is not completely sealed, and a couple more probably visited osmium tubes, but I don't know what's there.

Carcharot, do you know what that small fly is called, the pictures of which I posted just above? I must get the sealed reeds out and cut them, because she obviously put them there.

We have also recently completely lost our roots. But both bicornis nesting on my balcony still carry pollen, one in a replaceable transparent tube, the other in a new reed (so No. 4) of hive No. 3. Moreover, this new reed is one and a half times narrower than the previous one and two and a half times longer than the transparent tube, and the size of the bees is about the same. So I can confirm what Carcharoth said: the diameter of the cavity doesn't matter, as long as the bee squeezes through. And in this last reed squeezes with tension.

My operation on the first transparent tube gave a result - the fungus did not spread further, although I cut it off without a margin. So Pan Stepovoi, as always, set his foot on this point. But in the first three cells, where the mycelium has already managed to grow, the trouble is that the larvae almost do not grow, the average one died altogether. The fungus does not touch the larvae themselves, does not touch them, but also does not allow them to feed. At that time, in the saved cells, the larvae grow by leaps and bounds, I'll take a picture a little later.

The anthophores are also almost gone, all the burrows have been filled in since the day before yesterday. Occasionally a searching female flies up, but does not linger.

I don't know. There is such a fly Cacoxenos indagator, maybe this is it. But I usually see her at the stage of larvae eating bread, and I don't know what the imago looks like.

Thank you, she, dear, if there are no other extremely similar ones. Only Cacoxen u s.

Only Cacoxen u s.

Well, I say I don't know flies
Now I understand why I couldn't Google it!

Thank you, she, dear, if there are no other extremely similar ones. Only Cacoxen u s.

There was a larger one with a striped back. This one is most likely Miltogramma

I looked today at all the points of the city where the reeds were hung - there are no roots, they are gone. Bicornis and rufa fly in very small numbers, and they look worn out from the washing machine...
Sometimes, I rest near the evidence and press my finger or stick on these parasitic flies.
Various thin-bellied wasp-like creatures began to visit the cells. So far, no photos have been taken, but there are parasites with long ovipositors among them...

This post was edited by osmia - 12.05.2016 15: 45

hmm, strange, although the bees are different in body shape and a bit of color.
http://apoidea-g2n.jimdo.com/megachilidae/osmia-rufa/
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8B%...%BC%D0%B8%D1%8F
two different bees. Or am I judging by the wrong signs?

The photo on the first link has already been discussed, on it - not osmia at all, but andrena.
In the article on the second link it is clearly written:

How many of you have tried to slip your osmia a crevice house? One beekeeper must have done this to his own people:

Today I made similar ones, tomorrow I will try to hang them from my barrel with bees.

Osmi, when copying a photo from another site, it would be good to give a link to it:
http://www.osmia.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=...ca7534&start=10
Then there would be fewer questions during the discussion. The site clearly states that these slotted beehives are only for rufus. The root of such a dwelling is ignored.

Yes, I must have forgotten the link, and I read the article inattentively. It is necessary to sleep at night and not to snoop on the Internet.
a friend makes a greenhouse, asked bees to pollinate vegetables.
Will they be able to pollinate normally and how much per hundred will be required for their normal existence? Which bees are better able to tolerate greenhouses: ruffs or cornuts?

The last habitable reed of Hive No. 3 was sealed three days ago. More to the reed bundles of osmia do not fly up. There was only one bicornis left in the transparent tube. It vents very slowly: either from old age, or just a bribe is no longer enough. Today, a new hole suddenly appeared in the box with the earth. Whether the belated anthophora or someone else dug it, I don't know yet.

In the spring, 50 osmium cocoons were laid.
In mid-May, I collected this evidence. As for the height of 6 floors, I think the result of settling in is good. Let's wait for the larval development process, and in the fall we'll see who settled there and how much. According to observations, there were cornuts in the reeds, cornuts in the block and one bicornis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGmS7H0mgc

This post was edited by osmia - 15.05.2016 10: 13

A week has passed today, so I decided to take a look at what is being done in the semi-transparent evidence.
And there's a zoo!! Larvae, mites, parasites, mold.
Osmium larvae began to form cocoons,
Gray fly larvae still remained or new ones hatched, and they spoiled the bees a lot: they all climb into one cell and crush the physically tender larva...
When making a translucent beehive, in the very first glued silicone film. Silicone is not spared and carefully missed. In them, the loaves were covered with mold, while others saved glue, and there was ventilation - there was no mold.
For 2 hours, I transplanted larvae into uninfected cells in place of undeveloped eggs or crushed by parasites,or even "laid" new cells.
Zweel had to be scraped out and thrown away.

This post was edited by osmia - 05/16/2016 20: 45

Yesterday we had several thunderstorms with heavy rains, squalls and hail. As a result, bicornis, who settled in a transparent tube, disappeared. The second night she's not there. The outermost cell remained undeveloped and open. But in hive No. 3, another bicornis spent the night in another reed, probably there is a new nest there. This will be the third bicornis nest (most likely the same one) in this hive, and there is also one cornet's nest there. In hive No. 2 - two sealed nests are rooted, but no one arrives there for a long time. But the huge hive No. 1 is still empty.

In the antforya box, the newly dug hole I mentioned earlier yawns alone, and there are no bees in sight.

In nature, the first working bumblebees, terretstris and lapidariuses (or someone similar to them, you can't tell without a glass) appeared, and, interestingly, they were immediately large. When I saw the first one, I thought it was such an abnormally small uterus. But the second and subsequent ones dispelled this illusion: there can't be so many dwarf queens in one place. The strange thing is that usually the first to appear are tiny bumblebees of the first or second brood, and the big ones-already in the summer. At
that time, probably due to bad weather, the small ones did not fly out of their nests, until recently I met only foraging queens. But how and why they managed to feed the big ones so quickly is already a question. Now the queens are no longer visible, and the workers are working in droves in the thickets of recently bloomed thin-leaved peas. So that their life does not seem like honey, I sprinkled these thickets with maikin triungulins today. And I also threw a little bit of antforya into the hole on the balcony. But all the same, they are still on the table before the fig, we need to do something.

The osmium never returned to the transparent tube, apparently having been killed in a hail storm, and just before it started, it flew out. He took out the phone.




The outermost cell, as I said earlier, is not finished or seeded. A larva hatched in the farthest cell of the snake, eggs in the rest. Two cells in the middle were affected by the fungus, and I immediately cut them out. In three infected cells, cut off from the future nest, mold is rampant, two larvae have died, but one is still trying to survive, although it does not grow at all. It would be possible to get it and move it to the unfinished cell of the second nest, but I am afraid that the fungus may move with it.
In the same cells of the first nest that I saved by "amputation", the larvae are already hefty. But in one of them, instead of a bee larva, there are several fly larvae. But, unlike the maggots described by osmia, mine do not seek to penetrate neighboring cells at all, their sizes are already close to the limit (judging by the size of the adult cacoxenus), I think they will soon pupate.





Anthophora, the last of the Mohicans:



I watched as she furiously chased the equally belated melekta away.

This post was edited by ENO-05/20/2016 00: 27

When I read this topic, I also made a beehive of reeds on the balcony, everything is as it should be (this was at the end of April). For a long time no one came, then in early May, osmia settled. Interestingly, she chose for the nest not those holes that looked out on the street, but those that turned to the wall! I sealed about one reed a day. Now we will wait for spring.

Do you think these hives should be protected from the sun? Now it's still nothing, but in the summer they will be very hot, maybe they should be moved to the shade, they will not be cooked there?

P. S. I look at these pictures and think, it's the same bee or different... or you need to change your camera...

The camera is excellent (by the way, what kind of model?), but the osmia are different, the left one looks like a cornutus, they usually come with bright orange hairs on the abdomen. but a couple of times I came across them, with straw-yellow ones. But on the right is some other view.

The last anthophore hole in the box on the balcony was sealed about a week ago, and he never saw any more of them, either on the balcony or on the flowers. Earlier, the last reed of Hive No. 3 was sealed by bicornis. In total, this hive turned out to have four sealed reeds, including one - root. I haven't opened it yet, but it's about time. In hive No. 2, there are still two sealed reeds, both roots. Hive # 1 continues to be empty. So far I've only seen one of Eumenina on the balcony, and I've scared her off. But on the loggia, on the other side of the house, although it is glazed, these wasps visit regularly, perhaps even somewhere there is a nest. We'll have to move one of the hives there.

In the first transparent tube, the bicornis larvae devoured the bread rolls and broke through the partitions, which were already slightly broken when I cut off the moldy section. As a result, there were two larvae in one cell, I wonder if they are cannibals? Their neighbor had already separated herself from the pair by weaving a tight brown cocoon. The brown fibers in one of the cells are the excrement of fly larvae, where they are found. Despite the broken partitions to the neighbors do not climb. Osmia's claim that these maggots drill through the walls and drive bee larvae all over the nest doesn't seem to be getting any more dubious. I suspect that in his case, several cells were simply infected at once.



In the second tube, from which two separate fragments remained after the operation to remove the cells infected with mold, the larvae grow, but they are still far away for their older brothers and sisters.

Do you think these hives should be protected from the sun? Now it's still nothing, but in the summer they will be very hot, maybe they should be moved to the shade, they will not be cooked there?

I advise you to remove it from the sun. Last season there was one nest under the roof of the garage - all cooked.

The brown fibers in one of the cells are the excrement of fly larvae, where they are found. Despite the broken partitions to the neighbors do not climb. Osmia's claim that these maggots drill through the walls and drive bee larvae all over the nest doesn't seem to be getting any more dubious. I suspect that in his case, several cells were simply infected at once.

As for the larvae of flies, they gnaw and climb over, and try to get deeper. A dozen parasites were observed in one cell, and they crushed an adult osmium larva with their sticky bodies.
Why your people don't climb over - there are few of them and there was enough food. Later, the food will run out and start migrating if they didn't have enough.

This post was edited by osmia - 05/29/2016 09: 30

The camera is excellent (by the way, what kind of model?), but the osmia are different, the left one looks like a cornutus, they usually come with bright orange hairs on the abdomen. but a couple of times I came across them, with straw-yellow ones. But on the right is some other view.

The camera is a DSLR, Nikon D90. I still suspect there's something wrong with the color rendering. If there is a different view on the right, what is it? However, if they are displayed, it will be possible to determine by the keys.

So the left one was actually more orange? Then a typical cornutus. But with such a color, as this photo conveys, cornuts also happen occasionally. The view on the right is definitely different, regardless of the color rendition, I don't know which one.

So the left one was actually more orange?

Oh, who knows what she was like now? I do not remember. I generally thought that there was only one bee, until I began to look at the pictures.
Well, nothing, now, if they are displayed, I will pass them all through the determinant.

This post was edited by KM2200 - 30.05.2016 22: 34

When I examined Hive No. 3 for eumenins, I was surprised by another reed sealed with osmium. This could happen only in the last days of May or even the first days of June.

Meanwhile, in the first transparent tube, all but one of the larvae were cocooned. The latter is one of two that ended up together after the destruction of the partition. Apparently a sister (or brother?) I ate most of the food from both cells, and this one was unlucky, losing weight, as if I didn't die.




Fly larvae have not yet turned into puparia, but they have already acquired a characteristic barrel-shaped shape and lost their mobility. outside of your own cell. despite the almost complete destruction of both of its limiting partitions, none of them came out.



In the second transparent tube, the larvae slowly grow.



This post was edited by ENO-05.06.2016 13: 08

how's your osmia?"
Mine are pupating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt4iNNeD4uI

Yes, a long time ago, all the larvae of bicornis in transparent nests, including the most recent ones, in cocoons, and they pupate there, inside, or not, I can not know. But fly larvae do not pupate, although they do not move. There was a suspicion that they pupate only after wintering. Carcharoth, what do you say to that?" I still haven't got around to splitting the reeds.

osmia, it would be better if you posted photos, and not a video that YouTube mercilessly mutilates - there is nothing to make out. But it seemed that in one groove among the light cornutin cocoons there was one dark cocoon of bicrnis, it would be interesting to look at a normal photo of that nest.

This post was edited by ENO-03.07.2016 04: 23

But fly larvae do not pupate, although they do not move. There was a suspicion that they pupate only after wintering. Carcharoth, what do you say to that?"

If we are talking about Cacoxenus, then yes-they overwinter in the form of motionless larvae.

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 it

I used to dig up bamboo rhizomes from my friends , and they've taken root perfectly in a variety of places, even where there's no water.
I think these monsters are so adaptable to survival that they will grow from a rhizome anywhere.
As for the thickets, I agree - as long as the cane does not gain a powerful root system of the colony type - the stems are weak-so I have bamboo-consumers say that there are greens, but there are no century-old stems yet.

I don't know about the power of the rhizome, but along the course of a small river at the top grows reeds up to 4 m high and the thickness of the stem is 25 mm, and downstream 5 km is a vast lowland, swampy a little, the terrain is similar, and the reed is up to 3m and the thickness is the largest 11 mm. And they have been growing there for decades.

I sort out the tubes: those that I glued together and wound up with threads - a lot of parasites with a thin ovipositor. The hole is just in the joint. I won't link them again.
Normally populated tubes twisted from the paper of AVON and AMWAY magazines. True, my girls panicked, since the magazines were old, otherwise it would have been a nut job for me.
Made tubes with an entrance on one side turned out to be relatively long - from 15 to 25 cm, they were poorly populated. The units were filled to the full length. Most of them started the bookmark from the middle of the tube. The same thing happened with the cut-off tubes, the free end of which was filled with plaster.
I conclude that the optimal length of the hollow tube from the knee to the exit is 12 cm. If there is a knee in the middle, the total length will be up to 24 cm.

And a bee settled in the slot hive, which made cocoons of plant fluff, in the middle of the same lump-bread. After a while, the larvae formed 3 cocoons the size of green peas, but oval with a" nose " at the top. I didn't find the bee itself. I barely remembered the name-the woolbite bee

I've collected a whole cup of pollen bread, mixed it with honey, and I'll eat a little.

This post was edited by osmia - 06.01.2017 21: 50

Be careful, pollen is a very strong allergen, if you take it right in shock doses inside, then I'm afraid that after a while the reaction may develop even in someone who has not previously suffered from any allergies. Reeds are different, there are at least two types, long and thick only near the Black Sea coast grow. But I found something more abruptly-spotted hemlock, last year it grew a lot, and huge sizes: up to 3.5 m in height and up to 3 cm inner diameter of the hollow stem. This is not something that our, but even any tropical xylocops will have enough with their heads. The only thing that displaces is that this plant in its fresh form is very poisonous, but I think that by spring there will be little left of this toxicity in the dry stems. Last year, I did not make hives for Xylocop, because of the strong depression of the population, I did not even see a single female searching near the loggia. I hope they will recover this year.

We know about pollen. We take 1-2 grams per day, or every other day.
A couple of years ago, I cut the healthiest tubes - my finger broke. Well, I think the bees will start up as healthy female bumblebees. But that wasn't the case. a couple of these tubes were populated. the partitions were thin, and the cocoons lay across the tube. It was more work for the bee to drag the earth to fill up such a cave.
By the way, will Xylocopa zvichaina (Bjol-teslyar zvichaina (Xylocopa valga) Carpenter bee) live in reeds? They fly around my garage all the time, and there were a lot of them on the site this year, but they didn't fly on the pipes. There are plenty of dilapidated wooden buildings and rotten trees around.

1-2 g is also quite a lot, I recommend to stock up on diphenhydramine just in case.

Good afternoon. As for xylocop-they are generally some kind of mysterious. Last spring, it seems like they settled in bamboo nests (I didn't spare an old fishing rod, I still feel sorry for the fish and worm) with an internal diameter of about 15 mm, several individuals at once. It looks like the xylocope is purple. I was very happy, but they lived there, spent the night, and screwed up after a month and a half, chewed through the back partition of bamboo before that. I read that the course of the nest is initially horizontal, and then vertically goes down, I understood that they began to drill the vertical part and broke off, since this is a reed. Now I'm thinking of drilling an L-shaped nest in wood, hunting such a beast to tame, can anyone have any thoughts?
As for reed reeds for osmium-I cut with a knife with a partition node in the middle, while in 1 reed 2 nests - on both sides, entrances with an oblique cut, facilitates entry and reversal.) Hanging along the wall does not prevent settlement in any way. About tights really valuable idea, thank you!)

I registered really well, and I got into the thick of the bee discussion

Who we are, why we are here,
whether we are alive or not.
The wild bee doesn't care, the world below is just a road of flowers for her.(с)

that's all alive, just personally I think how to combine a thick reed with a rotten poplar for xylopa. I don't know about the others, but I think they don't sit idle.
I want to make some polypastes to raise the deck on the oak tree. I think to put honeybees there.
And for the osmias I prepare reeds. and since there is a lot of work, it's cold outside, I don't want to show my nose again.

Something I have deep doubts about the thick cane for xylocop, in any case, purple does not live in them, I was convinced myself.