Bumblebees

We have several bird nest boxes around our house. Some years they are used and some they aren't. I hadn't seen any bird activity around any of them this year so assumed they were all vacant. However, several weeks ago I happened, by chance, to notice a bee going into one of them. I waited and watched and there was another, then one came out and flew away and it was soon obvious that there was a nest of bees in this nest box. We were already members of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust so I look on the wallchart in the kitchen and discovered that they were most likely tree bumblebees (Bombus Hypnorum). This is apparently one of the less common species in the UK having first been recorded in the New Forest in 2001. It is widespread on the continent but it is not yet widely established here and has a tendency to nest in bird boxes. We already have a lot of bee and butterfly friendly plants and flowers in our garden and this year we made the effort to buy a few more.