Do bees ever nest in the ground?

[anorak]

I've just been doing a bit of gardening and watched fascinated as a bee, legs bulging with pollen, came down onto the flower bed in front of me, crawled into a hole in the soil and disappeared. Then another. Then another. Then one emerged with clean legs and flew off.

Do I have bees nesting in my flower bed? If so what should I do about it (if anything?)

Yes they do sometimes nest in the ground; we had bees nesting in our compost heap last year. We decided in the end that we would leave them there, and by October they had gone so we then dug out the nest. Otherwise you can contact your local police station for the number of a local bee-keeper, who may be able to come and do something with them.

Well they don't seem to be a problem. It's my front garden, so we don't sit there and the kids don't play there. I only saw one or two at a time. Perhaps it wouldn't do any harm to leave them there.

I was a bit cautious about weeding the area where I saw them, though, as I was worried they might feel threatened and swarm on me!

Yes, we have a number of Red Mason bees (solitary bees) doing this in our garden. Supposed to be docile bees, so not worried about them.

You could put up a nest for them in a sunny spot so they could go there instead.

Our concern was for dd, as the compost heap was quite close to the area that dd plays in, but they were no bother at all. We left the compost heap alone once we realised they were there, because we were concerned that they might sting if they felt threatened, but it really wasn't a problem.

As long as you don't disturb the nest too much they probably won't feel threatened; when dh found our nest he was digging the compost heap over, disturbed it quite badly, and the bees swarmed out, but they left him alone and soon settled back into the nest again. Plus we found out at the time that most of the types of bees that nest in the ground don't have stings, so you may find they couldn't attack you even if they wanted to! They may be solitary bees (who often nest close together) and they're harmless.

They usually chose soft, sandy soil, so if you want to get rid of them for next year, wait until they've gone in the Autumn, then improve the soil a bit.

Thanks for those replies. This is so interesting! I didn't know there were such things as solitary bees.

I've been googling to try and find a website where I can identify which type the bees are, but I can't find one.

\link{http://www.insectpix.net/\is this any good?}

\link{http://www.insectpix.net/solitary_bees_gallery.htm\bee gallery}

Thanks mears. They did look a bit like the Andrena Scotica bees on that page.

I'm so glad I stopped to watch them for a minute. I would never have learned all this otherwise! Thank you.