Burrows in the ground

Bees that nest this way. Nesting habit decides what a garden has to provide — bare sunny soil, dead wood, hollow stems or nothing at all — and it is the half of bee conservation that flower lists leave out.

49 records · nesting habit

BumblebeesBombusLarge, furry, loud, and cold-tolerant in a way no honey bee is. Bumblebees run annual colonies: a mated queen emerges alone in spring, founds a nest by herself, raises workers through the summer, produces new queens and males in late season, and then the entire colony dies except those new queens. They do make honey, in the strict sense of ripened nectar stores — just a few days' worth, because they have no winter to survive as a colony.
Leafcutter beesMegachileThe bees responsible for the neat semicircular notches cut from rose and lilac leaves every summer. A female leafcutter bee cuts oval pieces of leaf with her mandibles, carries each one back curled beneath her body, and uses them to line and seal a nest cell — the cells end up looking like small green cigars. The damage to the plant is cosmetic and the bee is one of the most efficient pollinators in agriculture.
Mining beesAndrenaSolitary ground-nesting bees, and the small volcano-shaped mounds of fine soil that appear on lawns and bare paths in April are theirs. Mining bees are the classic spring solitary bees of the northern hemisphere: short-lived, entirely harmless, often nesting in dense aggregations that look like a colony but are not, and a great many of them are specialists that visit only one kind of flower.
Sweat beesHalictidaeThe bees that land on your arm in hot weather, and the group that breaks the tidy division between solitary and social bees more thoroughly than anything else in the order. Some sweat bees are strictly solitary, some form small colonies with a queen and workers, and a number switch between the two depending on latitude, altitude and season — the same species living socially in a warm valley and solitarily on the hill above it. They are also small, abundant, easily overlooked, and among the most important wild pollinators in temperate and tropical agriculture alike.
Ivy beeColletes hederaeA bee that was not recognised as a species until 1993, was unknown in Britain until 2001, and is now one of the commonest autumn bees across southern England. The ivy bee emerges in September, forages almost exclusively on ivy flowers, nests in enormous ground aggregations, and is gone by November. It is one of the few insects whose entire annual cycle is built around a single plant, and one of the clearest records anyone has of a species expanding its range in real time.
Squash beesEucera subgenus Peponapis and XenoglossaBees that fly before dawn to reach flowers that close by mid-morning, and that feed their young on the pollen of one plant family and no other. Squash bees are specialists on Cucurbita — pumpkin, squash, courgette and the wild gourds those crops came from — and they spread across North America with the crop as Indigenous farmers carried it north from Mexico. In many squash fields they do the whole job of pollination before the contracted honey bees have got up.
Long-horned beesEucera and MelissodesSolitary summer bees whose males carry antennae longer than their own bodies, and the group a bee orchid is pretending to be. Several Ophrys orchids produce flowers that mimic the shape, hair and scent of a female Eucera closely enough that males attempt to mate with them, picking up pollen in the process — one of the most extraordinary pollination systems in botany, and one that only works because these particular bees exist.
Tawny mining beeAndrena fulvaThe bright orange bee that appears on lawns in April and produces small volcano-shaped mounds of soil, prompting a great many alarmed enquiries about infestations. It is a solitary bee, it is entirely harmless, the mounds disappear within weeks, and it is one of the most conspicuous and most misidentified insects of the British spring.
Buff-tailed bumblebeeBombus terrestrisThe commonest bumblebee in Europe, the one reared commercially by the million for tomato pollination, and — as a consequence of that trade — an invasive species on several continents. It is also the bee behind the winter bumblebees now active through December and January in mild British cities, which is a genuine and recent behavioural change.
Digger beesAnthophoraFast, furry, bumblebee-like solitary bees that hover in front of a flower before darting into it, and among the earliest substantial bees of the spring. The hairy-footed flower bee is the one most British gardeners meet — the females black and the males gingery, so different that they were long thought to be separate species — and it is a specialist of deep tubular flowers that honey bees cannot use.
Plasterer beesColletesSolitary ground-nesting bees that line their cells with a self-produced plastic. A female Colletes paints the walls of each cell with a secretion applied by her short forked tongue, which polymerises into a transparent, waterproof, cellophane-like membrane — a genuine biological polyester, and one of the most remarkable materials any insect makes. It waterproofs the cell against the damp sandy ground these bees prefer.
Alkali beeNomia melanderiA ground-nesting American bee managed at a scale nothing else matches: growers in the Walla Walla valley of Washington State build and irrigate artificial salt-crusted nesting beds covering hectares, in which millions of females nest, and then farm alfalfa seed around them. It is the only significant case anywhere of a wild ground-nesting bee being managed by engineering its habitat rather than by housing it.
Garden bumblebeeBombus hortorumThe longest-tongued common bumblebee in Europe, and the one that can feed legitimately from flowers every other bee has to rob. A garden bumblebee's tongue can exceed 15 mm — nearly three times a honey bee's — and it flies with it extended in front like a lance. That single anatomical fact makes it the key pollinator of deep-flowered plants such as red clover, foxglove, comfrey and honeysuckle, and it is also why the species has declined as those plants have.
Common carder beeBombus pascuorumThe ginger bumblebee that is still flying in November when everything else has finished, and one of the few common bumblebees that has held its ground while others declined. It is a moderately long-tongued species, it nests on the surface rather than underground, and it combs moss and dry grass over the nest — the carding behaviour its name records.
Red-tailed bumblebeeBombus lapidariusA striking black bumblebee with a bright orange-red tail, and one of the most recognisable insects in a European summer. The queens are large, entirely velvet-black except for the tail, and the males are quite different animals to look at — smaller, with bright yellow facial hair and yellow bands that lead people to report two species where there is one.
Early bumblebeeBombus pratorumThe smallest and quickest of the common bumblebees, and the one that gets its whole year over with early. Early bumblebee colonies emerge in March, reach reproduction by June and are finished by midsummer — which means the species is often producing new queens while other bumblebees are still building. In a warm year it manages a second generation.
Great yellow bumblebeeBombus distinguendusA large, uniformly straw-yellow bumblebee that was once found across most of Britain and is now confined to the far north and west — the Hebrides, Orkney, the north Scottish coast and a handful of Irish sites. Its decline is one of the best-documented in any British insect, and the cause is unusually clear: it is a long-tongued specialist of flower-rich hay meadow, and Britain lost almost all of that.
Ashy mining beeAndrena cinerariaOne of the most strikingly marked solitary bees in Europe, and one of the easiest to recognise: a black bee with two clean bands of ash-grey hair across the thorax and a distinctly blue-black shine to the abdomen. It nests in lawns, banks and short turf in loose aggregations, and it is entirely harmless to anyone standing over it.
Hairy-footed flower beeAnthophora plumipesA fast, furry, hovering bee that appears in gardens in early March and is regularly reported as two different species, because the sexes look nothing alike: the females are entirely black with orange pollen brushes, the males gingery-brown with long feathery hairs on their middle legs. It is one of the earliest substantial bees of the year and a specialist of the deep spring flowers honey bees cannot reach.
Oil-collecting beesMacropisBees that collect floral oil instead of nectar, and one of the few groups that overturn the usual description of what a bee does. Macropis females gather fatty oil from specialised glands on yellow loosestrife flowers, mix it with pollen to provision their cells, and use it again to waterproof the nest — which lets them nest in damp ground where other bees cannot. The relationship is obligate in both directions.
Fairy beesPerditaThe smallest bees on earth, and among the most specialised. Perdita minima is under two millimetres long — smaller than a grain of rice, small enough that its shadow is easier to see than the bee — and the genus as a whole is a radiation of tiny desert specialists, most of which provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus and fly for only a few weeks a year.
White-tailed bumblebeeBombus lucorumOne of the commonest bumblebees in northern Europe, and one that has quietly become three. Genetic work has split Bombus lucorum into a complex of at least three species — lucorum, cryptarum and magnus — that cannot reliably be separated in the field. It is a short-tongued generalist, an accomplished nectar robber, and one of the earliest bumblebees on the wing.
Shrill carder beeBombus sylvarumOne of Britain's rarest bumblebees, reduced to a handful of scattered populations in south Wales, the Thames estuary, Salisbury Plain and Somerset. It is named for its high-pitched buzz, which is genuinely distinctive, and it is a late-emerging long-tongued specialist of exactly the flower-rich grassland Britain has almost entirely lost.
Short-haired bumblebeeBombus subterraneusThe bumblebee Britain lost and tried to get back. Declared extinct in the UK in 2000, it became the subject of a reintroduction programme using stock from New Zealand — where it had been shipped in the 1880s to pollinate red clover and had survived — and then from Sweden. The project is one of the more instructive conservation stories in entomology, including in what it revealed about doing habitat first.
Rusty patched bumblebeeBombus affinisThe first bumblebee listed as endangered under the United States Endangered Species Act, in 2017. It was common across the eastern and midwestern United States within living memory and has declined by something close to 90% in range since the late 1990s — a collapse fast enough and complete enough that pathogen spillover from commercially reared bumblebees is among the leading explanations.
Giant Patagonian bumblebeeBombus dahlbomiiThe largest bumblebee in the world — queens exceed 40 mm — and one of the clearest documented cases of a managed bee destroying a native one. Endemic to the temperate forests of southern Chile and Argentina, it was abundant within living memory and has collapsed across most of its range since commercial European bumblebees were imported for glasshouse tomato pollination in the 1980s and 1990s.
Yellow-legged mining beeAndrena flavipesOne of the few European mining bees with two generations a year, which makes it visible from March right through to September while most of its relatives have a few weeks and disappear. It nests in dense aggregations that can run to many thousands of burrows in a single south-facing bank, and it is among the commonest and most watchable solitary bees in southern Britain.
Large scabious mining beeAndrena hattorfianaA large, scarce mining bee that provisions its cells with the pollen of field scabious and its close relatives, and nothing else. It is one of the clearest examples in northern Europe of an obligate specialist: where the plant goes, the bee goes, and its decline tracks the loss of unimproved chalk grassland almost exactly.
Pantaloon beeDasypoda hirtipesA mining bee with the most extravagant pollen brushes of any European species — enormous golden hair fans on the hind legs that look like a pair of feathered trousers and give the bee its name. It is a sandy-soil specialist working composites, and a female returning to her burrow loaded with pollen is one of the more comic sights in British entomology.
Sea aster beeColletes halophilusA plasterer bee restricted almost entirely to saltmarsh and coastal grazing marsh in southeast England and adjacent Europe, provisioning its cells with the pollen of sea aster and flying only in the few weeks that plant is in flower. It is a globally scarce species with a substantial share of its world population in the Thames and Essex estuaries.
Bryony beeAndrena floreaA mining bee that provisions its cells exclusively with the pollen of white bryony, a hedgerow climber that most people know only as a weed. It is a strict specialist on a single plant species, it has expanded its British range substantially over recent decades, and it exists as a network of small populations wherever that one climber grows.
Heath bumblebeeBombus jonellusA small, neat, short-faced bumblebee of heathland, moorland and coastal dune, and one of the few British species that regularly produces two generations in a season. It looks like a miniature garden bumblebee and is separated from it by the face: short and round rather than long.
Moss carder beeBombus muscorumA pale gingery carder bee of coastal grassland, machair and marsh, and one of Britain's declining species. It is a long-tongued legume specialist that nests at the surface, cards moss and grass over the nest, and depends on exactly the flower-rich unimproved grassland that has largely gone.
Bilberry bumblebeeBombus monticolaAn upland bumblebee with an unusually extensive orange-red tail covering more than half the abdomen, tied closely to bilberry on moorland and mountain. It is one of the clearest British examples of a species retreating uphill, and its lowland populations have largely gone.
Metallic green sweat beeAgapostemonBrilliant metallic green bees of the American grasslands and gardens, and among the most immediately recognisable small bees anywhere. In several species the sexes differ sharply: females are entirely metallic green while males have a green thorax and a boldly yellow-and-black striped abdomen, which leads to a great deal of confused reporting.
Great banded furrow beeHalictus scabiosaeA large, boldly banded sweat bee that has expanded rapidly northwards across Europe and reached southern England within the last two decades. It is socially flexible — nests may be solitary or contain several females with one reproducing — and it is one of the most conspicuous halictids anyone in northern Europe is likely to meet.
Sharp-collared furrow beeLasioglossum malachurumA small sweat bee that is one of the best-studied examples of primitive eusociality anywhere. A single foundress produces a first brood of small workers who forage for her, and only later are reproductive females produced — a genuine caste system without the sharp physical separation honey bees show, and one that switches on and off with latitude.
Brown-banded carder beeBombus humilisA scarce gingery carder bee of unimproved grassland, coastal grazing marsh and brownfield land, and one of the group of British bumblebees whose decline tracks the loss of flower-rich grassland almost exactly. It is difficult to separate in the field from the common carder bee, which is part of why its status took so long to establish.
Ruderal bumblebeeBombus ruderatusBritain's largest bumblebee and one of its scarcest, a long-tongued legume specialist that declined severely through the twentieth century. It was also shipped to New Zealand and Chile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to pollinate red clover, and in Chile it became one of the introduced species implicated in the collapse of the native giant bumblebee.
Arctic bumblebeeBombus polarisThe northernmost bee in the world, nesting within a few hundred kilometres of the pole on Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. It survives by being the most effective thermoregulator of any insect — a queen can hold her thorax above 30 °C in air near freezing — and by compressing a whole colony cycle into an Arctic summer of a few weeks.
Western bumblebeeBombus occidentalisOnce among the commonest bumblebees of western North America and now scarce across much of that range, in a decline that began abruptly in the late 1990s. It was also reared commercially for glasshouse pollination until production collapsed from disease — which is the same period, and probably not a coincidence.
Common eastern bumblebeeBombus impatiensNorth America's commercially reared bumblebee, produced by the million for glasshouse tomato and berry pollination, and the continent's counterpart to Europe's buff-tailed bumblebee in both usefulness and controversy. It is abundant, adaptable and thriving while several of its relatives collapse — and its commercial rearing is implicated in some of those collapses.
Early mining beeAndrena haemorrhoaOne of the commonest and earliest mining bees in northern Europe, and among the first solitary bees most people see each year. It has a neat combination of markings that makes it genuinely identifiable in the field, which is unusual in a genus of 1,500 species, and it nests in lawns and banks in loose aggregations.
Vernal colletesColletes cuniculariusA large spring plasterer bee that emerges in March for willow catkins and forms some of the most spectacular nesting aggregations in northern Europe — tens of thousands of burrows in a single dune slope, with clouds of males patrolling above them waiting for females to emerge.
Blunthorn beesMelittaGround-nesting bees from one of the oldest bee lineages, and mostly tight floral specialists. Melitta species provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus — bellflowers, knapweed, heather or bird's-foot trefoil depending on the species — and they belong to a family that includes the oil-collecting bees and is now thought to contain the closest living relatives of the ancestral bee.
Shaggy beesPanurgusSmall, entirely black bees with conspicuously shaggy pollen brushes, found almost exclusively on yellow composites. They nest in bare sandy ground in aggregations, and the males have a habit of sleeping inside closed flower heads overnight — several can be found packed into a single hawkbit on a cool morning.
Long-horned beeEucera longicornisA declining British bee whose males carry antennae longer than their own bodies, and the species several bee orchids have evolved to impersonate. The orchid produces a flower resembling a female Eucera in shape, texture and scent closely enough that males attempt to mate with it, picking up pollen in the process — one of the most extraordinary pollination systems in botany.
Blue-banded beeAmegillaFast, stocky solitary bees marked with brilliant iridescent blue or white bands, and among the most effective buzz pollinators anywhere. They grip a flower and vibrate their flight muscles at a frequency that shakes pollen out of tubular anthers — the technique tomatoes require and honey bees cannot perform — which has made them the subject of serious commercial pollination research in Australia.
African stingless beesMeliponulaThe least documented stingless bees on earth. Africa has its own meliponine genera, harvested across the equatorial belt for honey valued well above Apis honey, and they are known largely from museum specimens and from the people who harvest them rather than from research.

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