A pocket-maker. The following details are adapted from Sladen (1912). The nest is typically subterranean, often with a long entrance burrow. The wax is dark reddish brown, and is very soft and sticky; the sheets and cells made of it are thick. A nest established in a mole hill is described by E. Saunders (1898). The colonies are more populous than those relative, B. hortorum. The queens of the former appear later than those of the latter and the colonies break up later.
Sladen (1912) describes a Bombus ruderatus nest established in a abandoned vole nest