A box of bees

I gave up being on the BBKA swarm collectors' register because most of the calls I took were about bumblebees and in effect I was running a bumblebee advice hotline.  The majority of calls related to bees in the eaves of a house or a bird box and I suspect all of them would have been tree bumblebees (Bombus hypnorum).  This box in my mother's garden is home to a Bombus hypnorum nest.  The yellow marks on the front are from pollen deposited when the workers landed when the box was wet.

The bee at 9 o'clock on the entrance hole is fanning her wings to ventilate the box.

This one has collected red pollen, probably from a horse chestnut.  The fact that the workers are collecting pollen means that they are still feeding larvae within the nest.  Many of them look worn with bald patches on their thoraces.

The nest was being patrolled by male bees who were constantly hovering and dancing outside in the hope of being the first to pounce on an emerging female destined to be a new queen for next year.

Bumblebee nests are short-lived and within a few weeks this one will be empty.  The old queen, workers and males will all die and the next generation of queens will feed up before going into hibernation.

For a bee first recorded in this country on 2001, its spread has been pretty spectacular.  It had reached the North East here by 2009 and this map shows the latest distribution on iRecord.

The interesting thing about this invader is that it seems to have fitted into a vacant niche without having a significant impact on the resident wildlife.  Unlike all our other bumblebees this one doesn't have a cuckoo in this country although it has a social parasite (Bombus norvegicus) in Europe.  It will be interesting to see if that bee follows its host to this country.