I'd be 99% sure they'd be tree bumblebees just going by behaviour. The swarm you can see are the males hanging around waiting to ambush the emerging new queens.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Don't forget to clean the bee nest out at the end of the season. It'll make the box more attractive for roosting birds in the winter but if nothing else wax moths can find the nest and they make the worst mess of the box with all their sticky web. They filled one of mine up and it was very hard work to clean it all off.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I had both good and bad news about bees in my garden today. First the good news...
Earlier this year I spent a small fortune on a variety of different bee nest boxes and installed them in my garden, along with an old one I'd had knocking around im my garage for a few years - the plastic pipe and cardboard tubes type.
Whilst sat in my patio I noticed a bee going into the pipe nest, completely ignoring the expensive ones including a George Pilkington box.
I watched as bees went in head first, then emerged, turned around and backed themselves back in. I presume to lay eggs?
For a few years I've been wanting to tidy the lower half of my garden, and turn it over to wildlife planting but injury prevented me doing so. Finally this summer I've decided to crack on, and had a skip delivered today.
This is a pile of earth & clay in front of the greenhouse, with two years of weeds growing on it.
I cleared the weeds and started digging into the earth, only to see a group of bumble bees appear. Clearly I have disturbed their nest, so I backed off and watched them settle, before finding their way back inside again. You can see one of the bees in the centre of this photo, the entrance to the nest is a small hole in the soil under the black plastic sack...
So now I have a skip I can't fill, and a garden I can't clear as I don't want to disturb the nest any further. I might be able to work around the outer edges of the pile, but sods law says that whilst I've been doing everything I can to attract bees, as soon as I get a skip delivered, I find a nest right in the place I didn't want to find one.
Interesting. I was musing about why my Pilkington and Schwelger boxes are so much attractive to bees in my garden than other five or so. They fly there directly and don't even sniff out the others. I was wondering if there is a pheromone marking on the boxes used in previous year. They might smell of emerging female scent and so male bees make a beeline. This doesn't really explain why those two boxes started off before the others. The others have been there much longer. But, perhaps once the ball is really rolling, it keeps rolling.
I have this design up and the bees sneeze at it.
I wonder if the leaf cutters will emerge and start building soon. . The masons have used all of two boxes (Pilkington and Schwelger). Maybe the leaf cutters will use the nest space that's left George Pilkington sells a summer unit for the leaf cutters, because the masons might snaffle all the spaces, given half a chance.
@LeadFarmer do you have a lot of good forage where you and the boxes are?
@LeadFarmer do you have a lot of good forage where you and the boxes are?
Well, yes, and no...
I placed the boxes in my log store which is up against the house and on the patio as I have work planned in the garden and wanted tea somewhere where they would be left undisturbed. Maybe I left it a bit late? To be honest I wasn't expecting any takers this year.
I do have decent planting on the other side of the patio, and in the garden but there are no flowers directly around the boxes.
I've just taken this photo whilst stood in the garden and looking back over the patio, you can see the wood store against the house, with the bee boxes on/in..
Some specific mason bee planting might help. The only plant I had growing strongly in my garden when they emerged was forgetmenots and I'm glad I had that in for them, by chance. There are apple trees in gardens close by, but not a lot more flowering en masse in early-mid-April this year in my garden. The alliums, etc came later.
Phew @LeadFarmer, I thought you were going to say you accidentally destroyed the bumble bee nest! Inconvenient but nice to have them! You may recall I was moaning about wasps using my bee houses - I have 3 and they were going in 2. The mason bees have avoided those 2 and only gone in the third so maybe they knew. But although I had loads of them - especially as I had cocoons I'd kept over winter, I have only had 4 tubes filled! And two of those were in the last week! No sign of any leaf cutter action yet...
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Earlier this year I spent a small fortune on a variety of different bee nest boxes and installed them in my garden, along with an old one I'd had knocking around im my garage for a few years - the plastic pipe and cardboard tubes type.
Whilst sat in my patio I noticed a bee going into the pipe nest, completely ignoring the expensive ones including a George Pilkington box.
I watched as bees went in head first, then emerged, turned around and backed themselves back in. I presume to lay eggs?
For a few years I've been wanting to tidy the lower half of my garden, and turn it over to wildlife planting but injury prevented me doing so. Finally this summer I've decided to crack on, and had a skip delivered today.
This is a pile of earth & clay in front of the greenhouse, with two years of weeds growing on it.
I cleared the weeds and started digging into the earth, only to see a group of bumble bees appear. Clearly I have disturbed their nest, so I backed off and watched them settle, before finding their way back inside again. You can see one of the bees in the centre of this photo, the entrance to the nest is a small hole in the soil under the black plastic sack...
So now I have a skip I can't fill, and a garden I can't clear as I don't want to disturb the nest any further. I might be able to work around the outer edges of the pile, but sods law says that whilst I've been doing everything I can to attract bees, as soon as I get a skip delivered, I find a nest right in the place I didn't want to find one.
I placed the boxes in my log store which is up against the house and on the patio as I have work planned in the garden and wanted tea somewhere where they would be left undisturbed. Maybe I left it a bit late? To be honest I wasn't expecting any takers this year.
I do have decent planting on the other side of the patio, and in the garden but there are no flowers directly around the boxes.
I've just taken this photo whilst stood in the garden and looking back over the patio, you can see the wood store against the house, with the bee boxes on/in..
You may recall I was moaning about wasps using my bee houses - I have 3 and they were going in 2. The mason bees have avoided those 2 and only gone in the third so maybe they knew. But although I had loads of them - especially as I had cocoons I'd kept over winter, I have only had 4 tubes filled! And two of those were in the last week! No sign of any leaf cutter action yet...