Bees in my compost bin!

Has anyone ever had bees in their compost bin? We have! I discovered them yesterday & I'm chuffed because I've thought about having a hive in my garden before.

These pics aren't very good, so you can't really tell which species they are. All I know is that they are small (no more then 2cms) bumblebees with pollen sacks on their legs & they have a white/off white bum with orangey brown shoulders.

The compost bin in question has been undisturbed for a couple of years now, so I guess that's why they moved in.

 

Nice one RR

 

They look like bumble bees to me. I've had a swarm of honey bees in a composter and got a local bee keeper (BBKA swarms officer) to collect them.

 

I'm more than happy to keep them, though I'm having some trouble identifying them

 

They are white pants (that's "M"'s description .. for a more "formal" ID, we'll need to call in @Spruce )

Yes, I had bees in my compost heap within less than a year of having one! We only knew because we moved the site ... but, we left the bee area well alone so they could do whatever they needed to

 

white pants lol The nearest ID I can get is Tree Bumblebees

 

Hi All

@RandyRos


Just like honey bees you have a queen, Worker Bee who is female, and a male bee .
And all three look different but you will have more workers than the others , the huge obese ones that you see in early spring are the Queen bees looking to make a new colony as you will find them rumaging about in the borders and a favorite new colony they like to take resident up in is a abandoned old mouse nest .
The white on the legs reminds of clover pollen that they have been collecting.

Hope this helps a little as a reminder we have 24 species of Bumble bee and to make it more hard to identify they can vary in colour across the whole of the UK the more North you go they tend to darken in colour but they are the same species as you find in the south .


this one is Bombus terrestris (worker)


or is it this one


Bombus Lucorum (worker)

 

I have only seen the workers going in and out. Without getting too close, I really think they're Tree Bumblebees
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/TreeBumblebee

I will try and get better pics

 

they're in one of my nestboxes too!

 

here's the compost bin

 

Yes! I had a bumble bee nest in my compost bin last. I was really pleased and they were busily in and out all summer. Looking at the nest when they'd gone was fascinating. I'd have probably left it intact but for the fact I wanted to move the compost bin.