Ground nesting bees?

Hi - new poster here.

Wonder if anyone can help. My front garden has seen a large number o small piles of earth form with a hole in the middle. There are probabl about 50 of them at a conservative guess. The hole itself is about 6m and like someone has used a drillbit, with the earth making a smal mound about 3cm wide and a couple of cm tall. I've seen some very smal "bee like" things around.

The front lawn has an apple tree in it, and the holes are in that are of the lawn.

So far the little things haven't caused me any harm - and while I don' want to kill them, I equally don't want an army of bees living under m lawn. There are also young kids that play out in my street as we're o a cul-de-sac and I'd hate for one to get stung.

Any advice or guidance would be gratefully received.

Apologies in advance if I've posted in the wrong section.

Mark

-- markoc

Reply to
markoc
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imho Get rid of the bees.. A good way is to lore Hummingbirds ie HB feeders..

Reply to
Peter Pan

Leave them alone. They are mining bees, possiblyly something like Andrena flavipes (since you are posting from gardenbanter.co.uk).

They are not aggressive, and are interesting to watch. Each bee leads a solitary life, though they do tend to nest in aggregations. Native pollinators like mining bees should be encouraged rather than attacked. In fact, many native pollinators are becoming increasingly rare and are threatened with, or have actually become in danger of extinction.

Some info on various solitary bees, including mining bees (for the UK):

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North America):
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ground nesting colonial wasps (yellow jackets, genus Vespula) are aa different story...although they are predators of many harmful insects, they are very aggressive nest defenders and relentless stingers. Any nests I find anywhere near the house, or any other part of the garden where I regularly work, mow or walk gets eliminated.

Reply to
Pat Kiewicz

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