Bumble Bee Live Colony - Creative Woodcraft New Zealand

Bumble Bees - Live Colony

This wonderful Creative Woodcraft product is now proudly sold through Oderings Garden Centres - click here to visit their online store.

Product includes

Your cardboard bumble bee hive includes:

  • Approximately 80 worker bees and one healthy queen.
  • Instructions for setting up and raising your bumble bees.

Healthy bumble bees are perfect for garden, fruit, vegetable and flower pollination.

Mild-mannered large earth bumblebee bombus terrestris are raised for gardeners and commercial growers.

Siting

Since the cardboard hive that the colony is delivered in is not weatherproof, we suggest you purchase a Bumble-A-Bode, perfectly sized to accommodate the specially designed cardboard hive. “And looks just great in your garden!” It is built to last and can be used over and over again!

Available

All year round for outdoor pollination and greenhouse use. Our suppliers can produce and provide hives any week of the year, which is especially important for the glasshouse grower, and means the gardener gets great quality fruits and vegetables all year round!

Super pollinator for fruit trees, tomato hot houses, vegetable gardens and flowers.

Lifespan

If conditions are right they may pollinate for 8 weeks or more!  perfect for most garden pollination needs.

Efficient pollinator that gathers pollen from nearby plants, but can forage for kilometres if needed.

As the queen nears the end of her life, she produces multiple queens, 20 to 30 on average who set up their own hives elsewhere. Not only do you get great pollination, your community wins with additional pollinators as they spread each season. “So, consider adding a few extra "bumble bee nesting boxes" to provide suitable additional habitat for those newly emerging queens.”

Research

Evidence has shown that new queens that emerge from man-made hives may indeed be attracted to other similar man-made hives within which to start their own nests.

Other

For further information please visit our educational web recourse www.BeeGAP.co.nz (Gardeners Adding Pollinators)

Bumble bees work very long hours, foraging from dawn to dusk in search of nectar and pollen even on cold, rainy or foggy days which prevent other insects from flying. Despite being cold-blooded, bumble bees can produce their own body heat chemically and by muscular activity. They maintain a thoracic temperature between 35-40 degrees Celsius through enzymes in the flight muscles which break down certain sugars and release energy in the form of heat, and this enzyme is not present in the muscles of honey bees. They may also “warm up” for flight by decoupling their wings from the flight muscles, and produce warmth through an action akin to shivering. Even at temperatures below zero, bumble bees may still be flying.

Their durability is very important as far as orchardists or home gardeners are concerned, From early springtime right through to early summer the weather can change dramatically during the day – temperatures can plummet, greatly affecting honey bees, which won’t fly below 10 degrees Celsius. This is especially important for kiwifruit growers during its brief late November flowering period – in a cold, wet season, and bumble bees may well be the only insect pollinators visiting their flowers.

Shipping

Hives are 100% self-contained, with no need for any ongoing maintenance. The bumble bees are provided with sufficient sugar solution to last the life of the hive, which is pre-packaged at the base of the hive box. Hives are delivered to your door by courier service (shipped overnight).

Please note: delivery cannot be to P.O boxes.

Shipped in specially designed box to ensure healthy bees.

At the comments section of the checkout, enter the date you would like your bees sent, based on when you want to start pollination. We do our best to coordinate your target date with our bumble bee raiser.

Observation

Introduce a live bumble bee colony into your garden.