[Pollinator] judging nest depth from the surface

[James Cane]

 Hey Kit- I don't know a way to do this for several reasons.  You point out
one.  Another is the mother bee will block the passage of a probe down her
burrow (resolved by waiting until she exits the nest).  Worse, most tunnels
have one or more "kinks" in them and you never know if a probe has stopped
there or made it past.

It is handy, however, to have an idea if it is going to be a deep nest
before you commence digging.  For this I use a thin, flexible flowering
stalk of a grass, stiff enough to push, flexible enough to bend without
kinking and folding.  If I can slide it down the burrow a good distance,
then I know that I can shovel away top soil layers and that I had better
prepare a bigger hole to the side for a deeper dig.

yours, jim

-- 
James H. Cane
Native bee and pollination ecologist
Emeritus USDA-ARS Bee Lab, Logan, Utah

"Knowledge and comprehension are the joy and justification of humanity"
 Alexander von Humboldt
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