Here at Beemingham Friends of the Earth we decided to make the most of the unseasonably lovely weather and build a bee house. We started off by doing some research on bee houses to find out what would be the best kind to build. There were loads of options, including a city bee house, but we opted for something a little more garden friendly.
Following the Bee Guardian guide for making a bee house we found a piece of wood and set to work.
Next, following the instructions for spacing in the guide we marked where we wanted our bee holes to go so that when we started drilling we knew where to make the holes.
We set out our drilling tools, and decided to start with the biggest size recommended in the guide.
But after we’d drilled a few holes we thought that they might be a bit too big for the bees to be comfy, so we use used one of the smaller drill bits. Then we started to drill proper holes for the bees to go into.
Once we’d drilled all the holes we sanded down the front of the piece of wood to make it nice and flat before screwing on the roof and the hanging hook.
The bee house was now ready to hang up! The National Wildlife Federation has a guide of where to hang your house.
Here are some photos of other bee houses you can try.
This is just made out of a log we found and we did exactly the same as before.
This is a bee house we made out of a bottle and bamboo canes. It’s nice and easy, so it could be a fun project to get kids engaged with the topic of bees.
Notes: Because these bee house were going to be outside we lined the holes with straws which we cut to size. However, do not make a bee house entirely out of straws and please don’t use tin cans as they bake the baby bees.
