The weather has been very springy out this week with unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies. The flowers are starting to bloom and bumble bee queens have awoken from their long winter’s nap. I have seen them nectaring on red-flowering currant, hound’s tongue, and Oregon grape. To seize the day, I made a small bumble bee house to hopefully attract a queen to build a hive.
I cleared a small bit of ground and put some sticks down to form a base. Then I put a flat rock on top of that to act as a platform for a mouse nest. This will hopefully keep it off the ground to help it stay dry. Bumble bees are attracted to the scent of old rodent nests to start new colonies in the spring. The rodent burrow provides a dry cavity and the old nest provides insulation to help the queen keep the new hive warm. I put a flower pot on top to act as the cavity. I added some some rocks on top to slightly elevate the lid so the drain hole in the bottom of the flower pot can allow for some ventilation. I created a small entrance with a few branches and put some rocks in between as a porch for bees to land on. I covered the pot with leaves and put some old pieces of wood in the front as a small roof for the entrance.
The life of a bumble bee colony is an annual cycle. It starts off in the spring when the overwintering queen emerges. She will start the nest by building small wax cells to lay her eggs which will be female worker bees. When these bees hatch, they will start helping to build the nest and forage for nectar and pollen for the developing larvae. At this point the queen will stay in the hive and focus on laying eggs. Depending on the species and the availability of forage in the environment, the nest will grow over the summer to be about the size of a small football and contain 50 to 400 or 500 bees. In the late summer, the queen will lay eggs that develop into males and new queens. The males and new queens will leave the colony in search of mates from other colonies. The males don’t return to the nest at this point and you might see them spending the night on plants. The new queens will continue to return to the colony until it is time to search for places to hibernate at the end of the summer. The old queen, the female workers, and the male bees will all die at the end of the season. Next spring the cycle starts over again.
The bumble bee nest is not as orderly as that of the honey bee with its honeycomb of hexagonal cells. Bumble bees make clusters of spherical cells for raising brood and storing small amounts of honey. Over the summer as the colony grows, the nest develops into this fascinating conglomeration of cells. Hopefully a queen bumble bee will find my flower pot and find it an enticing place to start a new colony.
Source
“Bumble Bees: Nesting and Overwintering | Xerces Society.” Xerces.org, xerces.org/bumble-bees/nesting-overwintering.
“Bumblebee Nests.” Bumblebee Conservation Trust, https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/learn-about-bumblebees/beginners/bumblebee-nests/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2026.
