It's probably been a while so lets see your bee houses, bee hotels, etc.
Show us the ones you've installed, purchased, finished, or even in the process of making. Got photos of various bees/wasps on your structures? Post those as well. I'm hoping to learn from others.

I'll post a few later tonight. I'm just getting the ball rolling.

After a few years of various PVC pipe section, coffee container, and even small trash can bee houses, I set it to make a few out of wood. I was determined to use scrap and/or thrifted materials. I kept saving appropriate scrap. Then one day I found a tater bin at a thrift store for $9. Seemed like a good place to start. I disassembled it, made some modifications and got it all back together to hold some redwood bee blocks I made from a scrap 4x4. I still need two more sections but can't find it anywhere. But mason bees have already started flying here so I deployed it anyway.

To the left of the bee house mentioned above is my first attempt to make a bee house with plate type galleries. The housing was thrifted. I think it was some type of CD holder. I paid $8 I think.

I'm no master carpenter. I'm also using scrap from a variety of sources. So I've learned a few things.

I wouldn't use thicker wood and double side them for the plates. The reason is that many pieces might be cupped or bowed and not sit flush when you add them to many plates. Since I was free-handing, I couldn't make the plates fit groove to groove like in commercial plates. Thus, I had to make thin dividers...also adding to probability of poor fit. I finally got it to fit, though there are still some issues. We'll see over time. I would only make grooves in one side from this point on. It saves on having to split wood and make dividers and having to tweak them (and taking a LOT of time).

The placement may have to be tweaked. Some say it has to be within a narrow height off of the ground. I can tell you that might be an optimum, but isn't necessary. My structures are 132-year old brick and I've seen mason bees stocking holes in brick and mortar all the way up the walls to under third floor eaves. They should eventually find them. These are on a covered porch about 10-12 feet off of the ground and back under cover. They face the direction most of our inclement weather comes from so in rain with really high winds, it's possible for them to get damp. It's an experiment so we'll see how it works out. They are in about the most protected area I currently have though.

This one I made at the same time as the one above. I thrifted the structure for $13. Made a few modifications, cut the plates, did repairs, and painted a bit. It looks like whoever had it prior to me did the mosaic work. I believe this because they never removed the store price tags from the back and just painted over them. Anyway, while making the plates for this one I learned making the galleries is best done WITH the grain rather than AGAINST the grain. The amount of fragmentation working against the grain was disheartening and created a lot more work and waste. Lesson learned.

It is also located back under the porch near the last two.

Another reason I wanted the one with the drawer is that I wanted to experiment with it as a place to put cleaned cocoons and have it function as the emergence box. So I drilled two holes in the bottom corners of the drawer to function as the emergence holes. The fact that it's a drawer I hope means it makes it easy to service.

I think I paid $7-8 for this odd row boat shelf structure. It's thin wood and poorly constructed. I first had to make some repairs, then I primed and painted. Same color green as above... Largely because I had a gallon made!

For this one I wanted to use a variety of hole sizes and also use up all of the leftovers from the previous houses. Because the walls are not straight it presented some problems. The result was like putting a puzzle together. I have two more areas to flesh out but I wanted to deploy the bee house now because the yard is already getting activity. It's in a recessed window well so hopefully it is semi-protected. In the future, I don't think I'll stick to units with straight walls!

I plan on filling the existing gaps with something soon.

Another type I'm working on is inspired by the fact that I have seen main bees sticking holes in my brick and mortar from the ground up to under the eaves on the third floor. Then I saw the Bee Brick® :

https://www.greenandblue.co.uk...

They're not in my budget and I can't imagine what shipping would be from overseas.

Anyway, I decided If keep an eye out for non wood items to drill to make some test bee blocks. I found this one and the coating and heft made it seem like resin so I figured it would hold. When I got back to the shop and started drilling I quickly found out it was made of plaster.

It's an experiment so I decided to forge ahead and test it under an overhang so it won't get wet. I just deployed it yesterday so no word yet on whether bees find it acceptable. I'll be moving it slightly to one side because a window air conditioner is destined for that spot.

I'm still going to keep an eye out for different materials.

The first couple bee houses I ever made were from two large plastic cans, one a large plastic Folgers can and the other a large Carnation non-dairy creamer can. I cut native cane into lengths and filled the plastic cans after drilling some drainage holes in the bottom side. The cane segments worked well but needed to be replaced. Also, in our hot and humid summers, they never held moisture. They were out year round and moisture never seemed to be an issue. They were overhead up under roof eaves and the opening oriented away from the normal direction of inclement weather.. It was only on the third year that I noticed cuckoo wasps camped out around two of them. Now I really worry about Houdini flies.

Below is another experiment. I took PVC scrap, got a cap for one end, and cut an overhang into the other. I filled these regular paper straws. The small one has only thinner straws while the larger one has a mix of two types. It looks like there have already been emergences this year. I'm going to cut them open in the next few days to inspect. Both size straws were used by insects. They were both about 12 feet off of the ground and under an overhang on the side of the house facing east (away from inclement weather).

Smaller unit:





Larger unit:

Xerces Society handbook (PDF) entitled, "Managing Alternative Pollinators"

https://xerces.org/publication...

Appendix E (p134) has some discussion about hybrid bee blocks.

Growing a Greener World Episode 1002: Mason Bee Revolution

@UrbanWild Great looking projects . Very few bees have arrived, probably due to the weather, but I guess I need to get busy building something for them for when they do arrive.

Cincinnati Nature Center: Getting Started with Mason Bees - Part 1



Cincinnati Nature Center: Getting Started with Mason Bees - Part 2

McCannon said: @UrbanWild Great looking projects . Very few bees have arrived, probably due to the weather, but I guess I need to get busy building something for them for when they do arrive.

You might be surprised how much activity there is in your area already.

I did a couple more today. Will post in a bit.

UrbanWild said: You might be surprised how much activity there is in your area already.

I did a couple more today. Will post in a bit.

I've seen exactly one so far and it was a honeybee. Lots of blossoms on the early weeds that grow in the yard this time of year. I'm looking building something for the mason bees.

I'll take a look at the 2 videos you posted, and thanks for that.

Yesterday I thrifted two wooden boxes with problems. The smaller one is a red oak box that someone made. It was nice umtil someone spray painted it gold and mangled a hinge and made the top not fit well.

The bigger one is a wooden wine bottle box from Nickel & Nickel. It had some ill-fitting issues as well.

Both were cheap and both were destined to become leafcutter bee boxes (and mason bees but really geared towards leafcutters).

Below shows the transformation. Top and bottom removed from the small oak box. Wood was trimmed to secure as the back of the box and the remaining panel made one of the wood plates with bee galleries (tunnels). The back was glued and screwed to the frame.

The Nickel & Nickel wine box top was about an inch or so in depth. Losing that would have left me 3" depth for the bee gallery plates. Since I wanted 4" (which is optimum for leafcutters), I carefully dismantled the top into the frame and cover. The thinner top cover of the wine box was used for partitions for some of the bee gallery plates. The frame of the top was glued and screwed to the actiual box frame giving it the optimum depth I was after.

I also thrifted a wonky doll chair in order to use the wood for bee gallery plates. This was mainly for the Nickel & Nickel wine box as I had scrap enough for the small one. It is a longer box so that and a couple of pieces of scrap provided enough for the plates.

Complete Guide To Solitary Bees | Leafcutter | Blue Orchard Mason | Shelter | Cocoons



I disagree with trying to exclude bird feeders near bee areas. While they might get some bees, I still have plenty. And cleaning the tubes isn't necessary???

Crown Bees Mason Bee Webinar - April 15 2020

OSU Master Gardener: Mason Bees

How to make a bee hotel

What Bees and wasps are in my bee hotel: How to maintain a bee hotel

Xerces Society: Nesting & Overwintering Habitat For Pollinmators And Other Beneficial Insects

You can download the 12-page guide as a PDF

https://xerces.org/publication...