What is the decline in the global population of honey bees?

Honey bees in my window frame. Can you help?

• I have double glazed windows. Not wood. My bedroom faces south (sunny) and a couple of days ago i noticed that i have at least 2 bees coming and going in and out of the inerds of the metal frame of the horizontal 'swing open' window at the top. Its a window i like to keep partly open nearly all the time. The bees look like honey bees. They also look like 'solitary' bees from what i see on google. But there is more than 1. We are in the countryside and there are actually some bee hives about a mile from us in the middle of a field. This morning when i couldn't hear or see any bees i poked about in the little hole they are using to go in and out and lots of bits of dry mud came out! The bees have been putting earth in my window frame. Why?? I wouldn't want to kill the bees. Even wasps i tend to just 'escort' out of the house if i can. I know honey bees are in decline so i really don't want to just be squirting 'Raid' in the holes! I don't know what they are up to and don't fancy having bees setting up home in my window frames. Can anyone tell me - are they nesting? Will more arrive? (I read about scout bees that look for a new home for a whole swarm) If i plug up the little holes will i be trapping larvae in there? Help please :)

• Answer:

  While I know of several varieties of bees that pack mud, I've never known a honeybee to do that, so my guess is it is not a honeybee. In any case, yes, go ahead and plug up the hole as you will not be trapping any honeybee larva. Before there can be larva, a good amount of honeycomb needs to be built by the bees first so the queen can lay eggs. That takes a hive to accomplish, not a couple of scouts. When considering honeybees you have to remember that the hive is the entity, not the individual bees. So if you kill a couple of scouts/foragers, it really won't matter. We're coming into the prime honey flow of the season, so queens are laying roughly 1500 eggs per day right now.