Bumblebee nests: practical UK pest control advice

A bumblebee nest in the garden looks alarming and almost never needs treating. Here is how to tell what you have got, and the handful of situations where it is genuinely worth a call.

How to tell it's a bumblebee, not a wasp or a honeybee

Bumblebees are large, rounded and furry, usually black and yellow or black and orange, and noticeably slower and clumsier in flight than a wasp. A bumblebee nest is small — typically fifty to four hundred individuals, against several thousand in an established wasp or honeybee colony — and the entrance is usually a single unremarkable hole: under a shed, in an old rodent burrow, in a compost heap, or in a wall cavity with an outside gap.

Activity around the entrance looks purposeful rather than defensive. Bees leaving and returning steadily, rather than a mass of insects boiling out of a single point, is a good sign it is bees rather than wasps.

Why we usually recommend leaving them

Bumblebees are docile away from the nest and rarely sting unless the nest itself is directly handled or trodden on. The colony is annual, not permanent: it is founded by a single queen in spring, builds through summer, and dies back naturally by late summer or early autumn as the new queens leave to hibernate elsewhere. By the time a nest is at its most noticeable, it is usually also close to the end of its natural life.

Bumblebees are also declining pollinators, and a colony left alone does a good turn for every garden nearby. Treating one is rarely proportionate to the actual risk.

When it is worth a call

The exceptions are specific rather than general: a nest at a doorway or a route someone has to use daily, a household member with a known bee-sting allergy, or a nest inside a wall cavity that is causing damp or damage rather than just noise. In those situations, tell us exactly where the nest is and how it is affecting you — the options are usually a physical barrier or relocation, considered on a case-by-case basis, rather than a routine treatment.

If you are not sure what you are looking at, a photograph settles it in most cases. Send us one before you do anything else.