CurlyCap, good luck with your wasps' nest. I'm glad you've found the bumblebee discussions interesting. Honey bees are more aggressive than bumblebees. The bumblebees are the big, furry, colourful ones.
Stephen, I've checked that information on bumblebees flying around people and they're most likely to be red tailed or buff tailed bees. As you had several red tailed bees buzzing around in quite a short distance, it does indeed sound as if they were on a route to or from their nest. The book says:
"Try standing in a flowery meadow or flowering crop on a fine day in the summer; every few minutes you will be circled by a worker bee; typically the bee flies around at a height of ~2m in two or three small circles of perhaps 2 - 5 m radius before departing. .... Exactly what this tells us is debatable, but it seems probable that the bees are investigating and memorizing a novel landmark ..." (Goulson, D, 2010, Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation, 2nd Edition, OUP.)
Fester, you be careful with that rolled up magazine!