
How to provide bushes for nesting birds
In the spring, birds choose the best locations to build nests, so why not offer them a safe place to settle?
Solitary bees are important pollinators and a gardener’s friend. Help them by building a bee hotel for your home or garden and watch them buzz happily about their business.
Unlike the familiar bumblebee and honeybee, most of our bees do not make colonies but are actually solitary. The female spends most of her life searching for suitable nesting sites. Some species will nest in holes in the ground, while others will look for old beetle holes or hollow stems in which to lay their eggs. If you can provide a suitable home, these bees will come to you.
If you can make a bee hotel, the female mason bee will come to you!
Hang your hotel on a sunny wall, sheltered from rain. Remember to clean your hotel once a year to remove any build-up of fungi, debris and parasites.
Watch as solitary bees investigate your finished bee hotel in the spring. With any luck, the females will lay their eggs inside the stems of your hotel. Each egg is left with a store of pollen for the grub to eat when it hatches. The egg is sealed up behind a plug of mud, in a ‘cell’, and one stem may end up with several ‘cells’ in it. The young bees will emerge the following year.
In the spring, birds choose the best locations to build nests, so why not offer them a safe place to settle?
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