While bumble bees can certainly be kind of big in spring (those are the queens that have slept through winter and are looking for a new location for a nest), and can be both black and yellow, they’re very unlikely to sting you. They certainly won’t do so unless you actively harm them by swatting at them, eating them or stomping on them etc.

Bumble bees have retractable stingers that are used purely for self defense. “Getting close” isn’t enough to provoke a sting from any of the species I know of. There might be species of bumble bee I’m unaware of, of course, but the fact still remains that it’s generally very unlikely you’ll get stung by a bumble bee.

I think you’re confusing them with wasps, or possibly the more aggressive variations of honey bees. That’s a completely different bag of chips, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend building nests or hives for them near people.

As for why I’d want to build a nest for bumble bees, the main reason is that they’re important pollinators and threatened by extinction in several regions of the world. Ie. they help feed you, your family and everyone else in the world. For more on this, please see my posts I like bumblebees and 10 ways to help pollinators survive and thrive.

Basically, the whole making it resemble a mouse nest more is beacuse bumble bees often nest naturally in abandoned mouse nests. These nests are pretty much ideal for them in terms of location and size, so the bumble bees are attracted to anything that looks and smells like a mouse nest. If I had access to a pet mouse cage, I’d probably collect a few of their droppings and leave it near the entrance to the bumble bee nest.

We’ve got bumblebees living in the wall, but I think next year I will try and encourage them to nest in a box instead if I can!