All pictures in this post by Renewables At Home – copyright info
In yesterday’s post, I detailed the first part of building a bumblebee nest from an old flower pot. Read that part before this one, or you’ll soon be scratching your head 
Today, we’ll venture out and find a good site for placing and assembling the remaining pieces of the nest.
As for tools and materials, we don’t need a lot today:
- Nesting material
- A shovel
- Optionally a pair of garden gloves
The nesting material is the stuff the bumblebee queen will arrange to her liking and start breeding her family in.
Good candidates are dried moss or grass clippings, hamster bedding from a pet shop or upholsterer’s cotton. Avoid cotton wool and fibre glass insulation – the fibres are too fine and might act as bumblebee traps.
Location, location, location…
Bumblebee nests should be placed in a location that gets little or no sun – we don’t want to overheat the little buzzers. Try to keep it sheltered from the wind, too.
Hedge bottoms, raised banks, along solid fences and under garden sheds are all typically good candidate sites. Most species prefer an entrance at ground level.
Keep in mind that bumblebees need access to flowers, so find a location with a good selection of them within a kilometer (about two thirds of a mile).
You can find more details on good flowers for bumblebees on bumblebeeconservation.org’s Gardening for bumblebees page.
My apartment doesn’t have a proper garden, so I decided to look around in my neighbourhood for a good spot. I found one a minute’s walk away:
Draining the trenches
The nest should be partially buried, so I started out by digging a small and shallow trench, just long enough for the flower pot and the length of hose next to each other.
As mentioned yesterday, it’s important that the nesting material is kept dry. Our chickenwire cradle should go a long way towards that, but a layer of pebbles under it will provide a bit of extra drainage help.
Put the pebbles towards one end of the trench, like I’ve done in the picture below. I’ve also put the entrance hose in. Make sure you point the nail-pierced end of the hose away from the pebbles.
Cradle of moss
The next thing to go in, is the chickenwire cradle. Push it into the dirt and pebbles so it’s not easily dislodged, but keep the top above the dirt.
Next up is the nesting material. Place a loose, fluffed up ball of it on top of the cradle, about the size of a tennis ball.
If you like, you can make things bleeding obvious to the queen by thumbing a small depression in the ball and facing this depression towards the entrance.
Going potty
Now it’s time for the most important thing: The modified flower pot. The pot will function as the actual nest.
Place it upside down, with the rim covering the end of the entrance hose. Make sure the hose isn’t blocked by dirt.
A proper burial
Put dirt all around the flower pot, blocking all entrances but the hose. Put dirt over the hose, too, but leave a short section jutting out. Again, make sure you don’t get dirt inside the hose.
Natural bumblebee nests are often in abandoned mouse nests. To make your artificial nest look more like this, you can scrape away any grass and other plants immediately surrounding the entrance.
Rain cover
The final step is providing some rain cover for the bumblebees. Lay a few small pebbles on top of the pot and then place the tray on top of the whole shebang, upside down. The pebbles help air circulation.
Weigh the tray down with a few rocks to lessen the chances of investigative animals knocking it off.
All done
That’s it, we’re done!
Now just sit back and hope the bumblebee queen will deem your creation worthy of her residency.
Resist the urge to inspect the nest too closely – especially for the first few weeks – if you disturb the queen while she’s establishing herself, she’ll probably move on to somewhere else.
Don’t get too disappointed if no-one moves in (if it hasn’t happened by the end of July, it probably won’t happen this side of winter).
The nest should survive the winter just fine. With any luck, a mouse will nest in it, and increase the chances of a bumblebee queen finding it to her liking when the spring comes.
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This post was tagged with: bumble bees, bumblebee nesting boxes, bumblebee nesting sites, bumblebee nests, bumblebees, pollinators
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The little bumblebeehouse looks great! I must try this
Did the queen move in?
@Boris: No queen this year, regrettably :-/
But I sort of expected that. The chances of a queen moving in drops significantly once spring is over. I’m hoping a mouse family will move in this winter, so bumblebees will be attracted to the nest the coming spring.
I found your posts researching bumble bee nests. We were surprised the other night when we heard lots of scratching in the ceiling of our cabin. A few minutes later a bumble bee emerged to fly around the living room. I got it to exit by the door. Maybe fifteen minutes later another bumble bee appeared and then half an hour later another. The next morning a fourth was flying around and buzzing up a storm. Fortunately, I got all four to exit by the door. I was wondering if maybe there was a nest. There would be no way to be sure without tearing into the ceiling so I guess it may be a mystery we will never answer. If these were the first workers the queen may not survive. – Margy
@Margy: Thanks for commenting, and thanks for sharing
It’s quite likely that these were the first workers, and that there’s a nest in your ceiling. It happens from time to time that they nest in walls, so I guess they might find a ceiling/roof to their liking, too.
They generally prefer nesting sites that have just one entrance, but they might go for one with multiple entrances, too, as long as it’s reasonably protected against intruders. With any luck, there’s a second entrance to the nest in your ceiling – maybe under the eaves – allowing them to exit to the outside.
Thanks Thomas. I hope you are right that they have an alternative exit. I hate to think about removing the ceiling tiles and trying to remove the nest manually. So far the bees flying inside the cabin have been docile and easy to shoo out the door. But if they are coming back another way it might be a long summer. I would rather build them a nest outdoors, but I guess it is too late for that.
@Margy: Hm. I can see that it would be a bit of a nuisance to have to let them out all the time, but at least you shouldn’t have to worry about them being aggressive. Bumblebees are by nature docile, so as long as you don’t step on them or otherwise directly harm them, it’s very unlikely they’ll sting you. And they’re not destructive with their nest building, either, so your insulation is safe.
Set up my flower pot a few weeks ago keeping hopfull.
What if anything is first evidence ?
@Ian: That’s a good question. Opening a nest to have a peek inside while bumblebees are active in there is likely to scare the queen away – especially while she’s getting set up. I think the best way to find out if there’s anything going on in there is to set up a chair a few meters away on a partly cloudy, not too warm day and watch for activity around the entrance. Also, you could try listening for buzzing on particularly warm days, since the bumblebees will flap their wings to circulate air and cool the nest down if it gets too hot in there.