DIY Bee Hotel

I’m planning on making a bee hotel (or two) in the next few weeks.

I’m aware of the fairly common bamboo cane method, but recently saw online someone had drilled holes in a wooden post (untreated wood), and had then put the post upright, free-standing. No idea whether it worked or not; I take a lot of these things online with a pinch of salt as sometimes the aesthetic considerations seem to outweigh the actual effectiveness.

My question is: is there any reason this wouldn’t work / wouldn’t attract bees? Most designs seem to be meant to go on a wall. Would a free-standing post be too exposed, for example?

I’ve got it in my head that I could use a tall wooden post as a pole for a washing line, and have the holes drilled in that. Something about the dual purpose is appealing to me!

Any thoughts welcome

 

As of a few years back professor Dave Goulson, who studies bees for a living, wasn't certain whether these were a benefit or hindrance to bees (mostly the cheap commercial type with short tubes, a bit of pine cones or sawdust included in the design). The reason was that most were poorly designed and could attract to many predators in a small space.
He has a youtube channel where he trialed a few designs and hole sizes that might be worth a look.

Saying that I watched this video quite a while ago and found it really interesting. It shows how simple you can make things which bees will use, including treated wood. It is American but the basic are the same even if species a little different. It's well worth a watch.

 

Doesn't have to be bamboo, any dry hollow stem could be used and a variety of hole sizes might be a good idea.

 

I don’t see a problem in using a wooden post, but try to give it a simple roof without blocking out the sun completely. Most of the rain comes vertically, but if you can stop the horizontal rain it’s already good.
When it rains, it’s not an issue that the outside gets wet. The holes are covered/closed with soil (wet clay in my garden which acts like concrete) and the rain doesn’t go inside a hole. However, if it rains a lot, that protecting cover might get to wet and falls out.
I would suggest that you have holes on one side, around 5 to 6 cm deep and use once drilling size for a post. Different bees/hoverflies use different hole sizes. 80% of these are hoverflies and naturally, you need more holes for hoverflies.
Make sure you have a wet soil patch nearby. In my garden, I have a bird bath on the north side and the soil around is always wet because of the daily cleaning. Bees come to that patch and use the wet soil for filling up the holes. I counted up to 6 eggs in one hole.
It might be that none of them are used in the first year, because the wood needs first the smell of the garden.
Once the holes are used, then don’t change the posts. The bees will come in Spring time and take off the soil and free the inside bees one by one.
Please be aware that this means that you shouldn’t remove the posts otherwise you destroy a year’s new bee cycle.

 

On a recent visit to a public space recently, we saw a few posts with holes and a label saying it was for bees. I think it was Croft Castle. (Not that the bees could read the label of course.).

 

Thanks everyone. I’ve gone down a massive rabbit hole about these now. Definitely going to do a DIY one, although am still in the designing stages.