The world is home to over 20,000 species of bees, meaning there is no single answer to what a bee nest looks like. The appearance depends entirely on the species, ranging from complex, multi-year colonies to simple, individual burrows. Bees use materials like wax, mud, leaves, and wood fibers to construct shelters for their young and stores. Identification requires accounting for social bees that build large structures and solitary species whose nests are often mistaken for simple holes.
Honeycomb and Cavity Dwellers
The most recognizable bee structure belongs to the honeybee, which constructs the classic honeycomb from wax produced by glands on the abdomen. This architecture is defined by its highly organized, uniform array of six-sided, hexagonal cells built in parallel sheets. The comb serves as a nursery for developing brood and a storage vessel for honey and pollen.
When newly drawn, the beeswax is a clean, pale white or yellow, but it darkens over time as worker bees incorporate pollen and propolis, a tree resin used for sealing gaps. Honeybee colonies are housed within pre-existing, sheltered cavities, such as hollow trees, rock crevices, chimneys, or voids inside building walls. These structures are designed for long-term use and can grow quite large, containing multiple pounds of wax and stores.
Bumblebee nests present a stark visual contrast to the neat geometry of the honeybee comb, often appearing messy and irregular. Bumblebees do not excavate their own nesting space but instead seek out abandoned cavities. They frequently choose disused rodent burrows underground or low-to-the-ground spots like dense grass clumps or old bird boxes. The entrance is often just a small, inconspicuous hole in the soil or under a shed.
Inside this cavity, bumblebees create a loose collection of wax cells, which look more like a cluster of pots or bowls than uniform hexagons. These cells store nectar and pollen and rear their brood. The nest structure is further insulated with soft, scavenged materials, such as dried grass, moss, or the hair and bedding left behind in the original burrow.
Nests of Solitary Bees
The majority of bee species are solitary; a single female constructs and provisions her nest without the aid of a colony or workers. These nests are much smaller and more difficult to spot, often taking the form of tunnels dug into the ground or existing channels in wood. Nearly 70% of solitary bees are ground-nesters, sometimes called mining bees.
Ground-nesting bees create individual, vertical tunnels in patches of bare or sparsely vegetated soil, preferring well-drained, sandy areas exposed to the sun. The visual evidence is a small, volcano-shaped mound of loose dirt surrounding a central entrance hole, often less than an inch in diameter. While each female works alone, favorable nesting sites can attract dozens of individual bees, leading to a clustering of these small dirt mounds across a patch of lawn.
Another major group of solitary bees are the cavity-nesters, which utilize tunnels above ground in wood or plant stems. Carpenter bees are unique as they actively bore into soft, unpainted wood to create their galleries. Their nest entrance is a perfectly circular, drilled hole, about a half-inch in diameter, often mistaken for a screw hole.
A tell-tale sign of a carpenter bee is the presence of yellow, coarse sawdust, called frass, accumulated directly beneath the entrance hole. Mason bees and leafcutter bees are non-destructive, relying on pre-existing tunnels, such as abandoned beetle holes or hollow stems. Mason bees are identifiable by sealing their individual larval cells and the main tunnel entrance with thick plugs of mud or clay.
Leafcutter bees line and partition their larval cells using neatly cut, crescent-shaped pieces of leaves, often taken from rose bushes or other thin-leafed plants. These pieces are rolled and glued together to form a series of thimble-shaped cells within the tunnel. The final plug sealing the entrance is made of several layers of leaf sections, giving it a distinctive layered and green appearance.
Distinguishing Bee Nests from Wasp Nests
Distinguishing a bee nest from the visually similar structures built by social wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets is a common difficulty. The primary difference lies in the construction material used to build the comb or the surrounding envelope. Bee nests, whether social or solitary, are built using natural substances like wax, mud, or plant matter.
Wasp and hornet nests are constructed from papery pulp. Workers create this substance by chewing wood fibers and mixing them with saliva, which dries into a lightweight, gray, paper-like shell. Nests of bald-faced hornets and many yellowjackets are entirely enclosed by this gray paper envelope, often with multiple layers and a single entry hole.
Paper wasps build an exposed, umbrella-shaped comb attached to a surface by a single stalk, lacking the outer paper covering. Unlike the solid, pale yellow or brown wax of a honeybee comb, the wasp’s comb is a brittle, gray paper structure. If the structure is a grayish, dry paper ball or an open, exposed gray comb, it indicates a wasp or hornet. A structure composed of soft, pliable wax or packed mud belongs to a bee.