In the beginning of the video, Bees can be seen crawling around the trays I laid the cocoons in. I set my camera up and recorded all day using video lapse. By half way through the video I did not see any others emerge but there were a few in the beginning of the video that can be seen. By the end of the day we were losing light and I cut the footage at that point. That gave me about two minutes of video lapse footage.
When day time temperatures get above 55 Fahrenheit, the weather triggers the solitary Bees to emerge from their protective cocoons. It takes the larva all summer and fall to pupate within their mud cells and transforms into an adult bee over the winter and early spring.
I process the cocoons from the homes, removing the mud covering the cocoons. And place the cleaned cocoons in the refrigerator to keep them dormant until we get steady 55F days. Sometimes we get a warm streak but then quickly returns into winter climates. So I do not want the Bees to emerge too early just to be wiped out by the cold. So when I think we should be done with the bad frosts, I take them out of the refrigerator and place them in trays. I take these plastic trays, formerly food containers and place them outside by the homes I made for them. As the day warms up the Bees start making their way out of the cocoons and take their first flight.
I do apologize for the spotty light in this video lapse footage. It was a partly cloudy day, making it go from full sun to overcast constantly throughout the day. This caused the video lapse footage to vary. I did not want to set up a light, as it distracts the Bees and could cause problems. Maybe next year we will get a brighter day for them to hatch. Since this is video lapse there is no audio, so I added some music to fill the audio track. Music is credited at the end of the video.
LBRY Video Link
wow!!!