A closer look at Solitary Bees Part 2

We see more of the bee house I constructed, and a little over half way through the video at the 10:15 mark I change the angle and get a view into the bee homes straight on. I usually set up the camera to the left or the right, so I am not in the flight path of the Bees. It will cause them they queue up outside, like airplanes in a holding pattern over an airport...haha I dont mind doing this for a short amount of time but long term it would slow down the Bees productivity. They get curious about my camera and tend to get distracted when the big DSLR is in their flight path.

I noticed some Bees shared the same hole, seeing one go in and then another following. When I had the smaller 2x4 homes this would not happen as far as I know. Maybe because these wood planks with the wood routed from them are much bigger. I am curious to see the structures of their mud homes inside when two Bees build out the same hole over time.

During the few months while these Bees were out and from February through April I brought my tripod outside along with my Lumix GH3 camera, I put my Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm Macro lens on it and just let it record them working hard at their homes.

In this series I will be using a Shure VP83 LensHopper external microphone to capture the sounds of the Bees. A high pitched buzzing can be heard occasionally coming from inside the homes when the Bees are shaking off the pollen they collected. And the video is recorded at 60 FPS for smooth footage of the Bees flying and moving around. Using LBRY as my video platform, the video I rendered is what you get in playback, so there should be little to no loss when viewing.

Two kinds of Mason Bees can be seen entering and leaving the homes. The most easy way to tell which is which is their butts. One has a plain black abdomen (Osmia cornuta) also known as a European Orchard Bee. And the other has a yellow fuzzy abdomen (Osmia leaiana) also known as a Orange-vented Mason Bee.

In Part 3 we will take an even closer look into the bee house and the planks inside. Changing my macro settings we get to see the Bees entering and exiting their homes with more detail. Also a disagreement between two Bees can be observed. I guess using the same hole does not always go well for two Solitary Bees.

LBRY Video Link

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