How To Help Bumble Bees In Spring
Excerpted from: Five Ways to Support Queen Bumble Bees this Spring
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When preparing habitat for Bumble Bees, it is critical to understand their needs
throughout the year.
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Spring is upon us, which means the buzz of Bumble Bees fills the air! This is a great time to ensure
that your green space is ready as bees begin waking up and looking for food.
The queen Bumble Bees faces 2 critical challenges:
The queen needs to find a suitable nesting site to rear her brood.
The queen needs sufficient food for herself and her brood in spring, when floral resources are limited.
The most important thing is to provide the right types of flowers.
Read more: Plants List For Bees
Native species are important because the bees rely on the plants for pollen and nectar. Many non-native
plants and ornamentals provide very little nectar.
Bumblebees prefer perennial plants as opposed to annuals, more than other native bees and honeybees, as perennials tend to have larger quantities of nectar.
Bumblebees are generalists when it comes to choosing the flowers they pollinate while foraging for nectar
and pollen. They typically prefer blue, purple, pink, and yellow flowers. They're actually color-blind to red
flowers unless the red flowers have ultraviolet markers they can see.
Although double blooms are beautiful, bees have difficulty reaching the nectar inside the flowers.
In spring, the queen bee emerges from the hole in the ground in which she has been hibernating all
winter. The queen will immediately begin to search for a nesting site. Nest sites vary between Bumble
Bee species. Most of the more common species prefer dry, dark cavities and nests can turn up in a
variety of unexpected places.
Bumble Bee Houses
Commercially available Bumble Bee houses are NOT properly designed and will not help
support Bumble Bees, nor are the native bee houses sold for Mason Bees.
Some nest underground, in places such as abandoned rodent holes, under sheds and in compost
heaps. Of those that nest above ground, some make nests in thick grass, while others make nests
in bird boxes, lofts and in trees. Bumble Bee nests vary in size depending on the species and time
of year. A well-established nest may contain up to 400 Bumble Bees.
When searching for a nest, the queen will investigate the environment using both sight and smell. When
she finds a potentially suitable site she will investigate by going into the hole. If it proves unsuitable
she will continue searching until she finds a nest site. The low-flying zig zag flight of a nest-site searching
queen is seen in spring and is very distinctive. Once she finds a place, the queen will construct a few
waxen pots, fill them with nectar and pollen, and proceed to lay her eggs on top.
You can help Bumble Bees by providing them with somewhere to nest. The first step of course is to
provide lots of the right kinds of flowers in spring. At this time of year the nest-searching queen will
be attracted to gardens where she can find plenty of food to help her produce her first batch of eggs.
DIY Easy Bumble Bee Nest
Supplies: A flowerpot greater than 8 inches in diameter, a piece of slate/tile and a bit of tube or pipe.
Instructions:
1. Sink the upturned flower pot into the ground and use the slate/tile to cover any
drainage holes to keep the rain out.
3. Run a hose or pipe underground to the pot, leaving a prominent entrance. Be
sure to make drainage holes in the pipe.
3. Finally, fill with a generous handful of nesting material, such as old bedding from
a pet mouse, guinea pig, etc.
DIY More Advanced Bumble Bee Nest
The following project provides instructions on how to build a wooden Bumble Bee house. For
the best results, install the house in an area with plentiful sources of food for the queens (i.e. pollen
and nectar from diverse flowering trees, shrubs, and forbs). Avoid sites that are within 10 feet of anthills,
or at risk of being sprayed with pesticides or vandalized.
The house will be installed below ground should have a 6” piece of plastic pipe inserted into the
entrance hole. Below ground houses should be partially buried into the side of a well-drained gradual
slope, with the pipe angling slightly down the slope to ensure that rainwater does not drain
into the house. The house and pipe length should be covered with a piece of sod so that only the
very end of the pipe is exposed.
Complete Instructions: Building and Installing a Bumble Bee House
If you find a Bumble Bee nest, consider yourself very lucky! They aren’t very common, and
can be difficult to find.
it is best to leave it alone and avoid disturbing the nest. If you do approach close to it, be sure not
to breathe on the nest, as this can make the bees behave defensively, and they may sting.
Please note that though Bumble Bees are not generally aggressive, they might get aggravated
if you interfere with the nest itself.
Bumble Bees don’t form swarms, but you may see a cloud of male
bees flying outside the nest. They should just get on with life and do their own thing —
doing a wonderful job of pollinating plants, wildflowers and your vegetables. Even the very
largest nests produce very little “traffic” in and out, so you won’t see threatening numbers of
bees at any point during the summer.
Bumblebee nests don’t live for long, so the nest should die naturally within a few months. After
that time, the new queens will have flown from the nest to hibernate in the soil elsewhere.
It is possible that a different Bumble Bee queen will find and use the same hole next year. The
nest will die in the autumn though, and all the bees will have left or died. If you don’t want bees
in the same place again you can block the entrance to the nest up after it dies down to prevent
a new queen finding the nest site in later years.
Wisconsin Bee Identification Guide
Spring Wild Bees of Wisconsin
Bumble Bees of Wisconsin
Wild Native Bee Nest Boxes