GAZUMPED BY BEES

Last year we had a family of blue tits reared in one of our nest boxes, so it was a pleasure to see them return to the nest again this spring. They were in and out for days, carrying nesting materials and building their nest ready to raise their young, but then they disappeared. I have since seen a number of bumblebees going in and out of the nest and it appears that they have taken it over.

I did some research online and quickly discovered that it is actually rather common for tree bumblebees to nest in bird boxes containing old bird nests and – rather surprisingly to me – nest-searching queen bees are even capable of evicting blue tits from a nest box, then re-using their nest.

This certainly seems to be what happened in this case. I think the attached photo is of the queen bee, which was very large.

James Wigley, Birmingham