I can attest that that feral bees can and do set up shop in water meter housing, usually underground. They seem to be able to set up shop in any hollow equivalent to a medium super and choose them regularly as nest sites. Here in LA we have thousands of colonies established on a yearly basis in any sort of void, I don't see any rhyme or reason for most of the sites they choose other than compactness and not being directly heated or impacted by sunlight, much. 

Whether they can be induced to build expansively and store honey to the level of EHBs is a matter of debate, but for our local purposes they are free bees and they do reasonably well for non-commercial production.

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