 the entrance pipe so it gently slopes up to the surface and clear the vegetation from an area a few inches around where the pipe surfaces.
The best time to install a bumble bee nest box is in early spring, when the first queens have emerged from hibernation and are searching for a nest site; in many areas, this is when the willows first start blooming.
Bumble bee nests require little maintenance. Watch your boxes through the spring and early summer. Any above-ground boxes that are unoccupied by late July can be removed, cleaned and put into storage until the following spring. This is not vital, and if you have a lot of boxes on a large site it may not be practical. In late fall or early winter inspect all the boxes that have been occupied. Remove the old nests, clean them and make any repairs. Cleaning the boxes with a bleach-water solution (1:2 ratios) will help reduce parasites and diseases in the nests. The following spring, add fresh nesting material to all the boxes.
The package bumble bee industry, which provides farmers with live bumble bee colonies for crop pollination, currently only produces a single eastern bumble bee species, Bombs impatiens. This species is then shipped nationwide, in a situation similar to the blue orchard bee, often far beyond its native range. Many bumble bee scientists now believe that these commercially produced bumble bees are responsible for the introduction of one or more diseases which have decimated several bumble bee species, even causing the potential extinction of one species, Bombus franklini (Franklin's bumble bee).
There is an enormous need for managed agricultural pollinators in this country, but it critical not to import non-local bees, especially near wild areas, even if the bees are represented as being the same species as local bees. The alternatives are to either develop local commercial sources of bees that are native to your region or to rear already widely established non-native species, such as honey bees or the alfalfa leafcutter bee, as managed pollinator