Excavator: Ground. The species nests in open places with sparse vegetation. It nests gregariously, sometimes in vast nesting aggregations of up to 100 000 nests at a density of about 130 nests per square metre in suitable habitat. Unusually, in mown sites, the nests are found in the denser grassy area (Pesenko, Banaszak et al., 2000). The nest has a single vertical, circular, smoothed main entrance, 25-30 cm deep, with 1-4 internally smoothed broodcells laterally (Westrich, 2018)
In Germany, Westrich (2018) reports nesting in compacted soil in pathways