Cannibalism. Murder. Incest. What bumblebees are really up to in your garden By Dave Goulson We found her on a rubbish tip in New Zealand, buzzing around the lupins and thistles which thrive among the piles of rubble and broken bottles. With her dowdy brown stripes and her white, scruffy tail, this short-haired bumblebee was never going to be the world's most beautiful insect. But to me and my botanist travelling companion, Mick Hanley, she was worth every one of the 12,000 miles we had flown to find her. On that memorable day in early 2003, we celebrated with several drinks for we were one step closer to our aim: re-introducing to British shores a species whose extinction here can be blamed, in part, on Adolf Hitler. The bumblebee has a secret life full of cannibalism, murder and incest If there had been no World War II, there would have been no Dig For Victory campaign urging farmers to do everything they could to increase food production. The hedges in which bumblebees like to nest were ripped out, and patches of land, previously deemed too small to bother with, saw their wildflowers replaced by crops. This process continued even after the war and many of the flower-rich habitats in the UK have since been destroyed as a result. Fewer flowers equals fewer bees. When I was a child growing up near Shrewsbury in the Sixties there were still 25 species of bumblebee in this country - including those unfortunate enough to fall into my hands. The hedges in which bumblebees love to next were ripped out during the Dig for Victory campaign in WWII An avid fan of Gerald Durrell's books about growing up in Corfu and keeping exotic animals in his bedroom, I did my best to follow in his footsteps, making do with the slightly more mundane fauna of Shropshire. I constructed a butterfly net from a wire coat-hanger and a pair of my mum's stockings and, after a heavy rainstorm one summer's day, I ensnared several bedraggled bumblebees clinging to our buddleia. I was seven and understood little about these most loved and familiar of garden insects - their bizarre sex lives, the violent internecine struggles within their nests, or the reason they have smelly feet. Yet I was drawn to them even then and decided I would help by drying them out. Too young to realise the best option was a gentle blow-dry with my mum's hairdryer, I laid them instead on the hotplate of the electric cooker, covered them in tissue paper and turned the heat on to low. Unfortunately, I got bored of waiting for them to warm up and wandered off until I noticed the smoke. The tissue paper had caught fire and the poor bees were frazzled. I felt terribly guilty, but I hope I have made up for it since. Now Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Sussex, I have long maintained my fascination with the "dumbledore," as the bumblebee was known in Old English. It was this that led me to New Zealand to find that elusive short-haired bumblebee and, three years later, to set up the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. B y then, the short-haired variety was one of three species which had become extinct in this country. The other two - Cullem's bumblebee and the apple bumblebee - are presumed lost for ever, but there is still a chance of reintroducing the short-haired variety to the UK. Adolf Hitler could be blamed for the extinction of the bumblebee on British shores In Victorian times, a consignment of bumblebees was sent by boat from England to New Zealand to help farmers there pollinate their crops. Among them were short-haired specimens - and the first challenge for Mick and I was to identify their descendants. We carried hospital urine sample tubes in which we trapped and stared at endless bees in an attempt to work out what they were. Embarrassingly, these occasionally tumbled out of our pockets in public places - suggesting that we had serious urological problems - but, eventually, we found that first specimen and subsequently many others. The years since have been spent finding out more about viable habitats in which these intriguing insects can once again thrive in this country. Larger and furrier than their honeybee cousins, bumblebees differ from them in many other respects, not least the conduct of their love lives. Honeybee sex is a brutal affair. Each queen mates a dozen or so times, all during a single nuptial flight made early in life. The mid-air coupling concludes with an explosive rupture of the male drone's genitalia, which sends him plummeting to the ground where he quickly expires. When Dave Goulson was seven he loved to capture bumblebees and analyse them Undaunted, the queen continues her flight in pursuit of other conquests until she has stored enough sperm for a lifetime of egg production and returns to the nest, leaving a trail of dead lovers behind her. By contrast, the earthbound coupling of bumblebees sees the female mating only once in her life. Like his honeybee counterpart, the male bee has two powerful claspers at the tip of his abdomen with which he grips his mate. Mating typically lasts for about half an hour and afterwards the male inserts a sticky glue into the queen, forming a "mating plug" which prevents her doing it again. In high summer, their duties completed, clusters of males can be seen sitting around on flowers and drinking nectar, like men propping up the bar in a pub. The parallels with human behaviour are irresistible, particularly since male bumblebees do little or no work in the nest. The process of building those nests begins when the first brave queens - their eggs now beginning to develop - emerge from hibernation in early spring. Goulson travelled to New Zealand to find the elusive bumblebee and set up the Bumblebee Conservation Trust Many like to nest under or at ground level. My garden currently has at least two nests: one in a compost heap and another hidden underneath a piece of old wood below the children's trampoline. The youngsters had been happily bouncing about above the nest before I pointed it out to them, and the bees themselves seem not the slightest bit perturbed. I have also heard of bumblebees nesting in loft insulation and even in a disused tumbledryer, using the accumulated fluff in the air filter to make themselves snug. H ere, the queen will sit on her eggs in much the same way as a bird. She shivers her flight muscles to produce heat and presses her thinly-furred tummy against her brood to keep it at a cosy 30c, even when temperatures outside dip to freezing. She needs huge amounts of sugar-rich nectar to keep this up. But a bumblebee with a full stomach can operate her wings for only 40 minutes before she is starving again, and to keep her eggs warm a queen might have to visit as many as 6,000 flowers in a day. In Victorian times bumblebees were sent from England to New Zealand to help them pollinate their crops This is where the smelly feet come in. Each time a bee drains a flower of nectar with her long tongue, she leaves odorous footprints which warn subsequent arrivals that it is empty and saves them wasting time exploring it. How humbling to reflect that an insect with a brain smaller than a grain of rice has powers of perception and learning that can put us humans to shame. These efforts are rewarded when the queen's eggs hatch into daughters. These female bumblebees become the workers, taking over the gathering of nectar and pollen from the queen, who now remains in the nest for the rest of her days. Nothing sounds more harmonious than a virgin sisterhood all labouring to help their ageing mother, but everything changes in mid-summer when the females suddenly turn on each other and the nest is rife with cannibalism, infanticide and incest. This ensues when the queen begins laying unfertilised eggs from which, by a quirk of bumblebee genetics, males are born. All would be well if the female workers were happy to look after their new brothers but, although celibate, they are also able to lay unfertilised eggs and can thus have sons of their own. The result is bumblebee bedlam as mothers, sisters and daughters battle over whose sons will survive, eating each other's eggs and biting and stinging one another. Sometimes, the queen is even killed by her daughters. The males who have survived the in-fighting go on to mate with new queens from other nests, but will also happily impregnate those from their own nests, including their sisters. Their sole purpose in life now served, they will soon die. So, too, will the female workers, the only survivors of the nest being the new queens who, once mated, enter hibernation. They will remain dormant until the following spring, when they are ready to begin this fascinating cycle of life all over again. Goulson now researches bumblebees as Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Sussex This year, we will be watching those emerging from hibernation with particular interest because, in May 2012, it was finally possible to release the first short-haired bumblebees seen here for many years on the RSPB reserve at Dungeness in Kent. T hanks to years of work by academics and conservation organisations, with funding from Natural England, the government body which protects and improves the environment, more than 500 acres of new flower-rich habitat have been created in this wild stretch of coastline. But whether the queens released last year survived the washout summer and went on to establish nests we will know only next month when any new queens they gave birth to will have completed their hibernation. If any are sighted in the coming months, they could act as a flagship for conservation efforts across the UK, because their direct relevance to man through crop pollination underlines the importance of protecting them. Our own survival as a species is inextricably linked to the wonderful diversity of life on Earth. The short-haired bumblebees of today might help save the world of tomorrow. A STING IN THE TALE by Dave Goulson, published by Jonathan Cape at £16.99. © 2013 Dave Goulson. 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