Nesting Habits

Solitary bees in Britain are highly diverse, therefore so are their nesting habits. The majority of British species nest in the ground, excavating their own nest. The female builds the nest by herself. She chooses a suitable piece of ground in which to nest and uses her body to dig out a nesting chamber in the ground. She adds pollen to the chamber, which is often moistened with nectar, and lays an egg. She then seals off that section of the nest before moving onto the next chamber. Although most solitary bees nest solitarily, in suitable nest sites you often find aggregations of nests. There are also a number of species in Britain that nest in the ground but create turrets over their nests, these are often very distinctive.

A number of species also nest aerially, usually in old beetle holes often sealing the nests with a saliva like substance, mud, chewed leaves, resin or sections of leaves which they cut with their jaws. These species are the ones most likely to take to artificial nests in gardens. There is also one species of solitary bee in Britain, Ceratina cyanea, that excavates its own aerial nest, usually in bramble stems. This small metallic blue bee excavates out the pith of the bramble stem and nests in there. Unusually both the males and females also overwinter, hibernating in the stems.

Finally there are the snail shell nesting bees, of which we have three species in Britain. They use chewed up leaves to seal off the each section in the empty nest shells and often camouflage the shell in some way