A revised blog, originally written by Andrew William Kirkland in July 2020, reviewed by Buglife for Solitary Bee Week 2026
When discussing bees, people tend to imagine social bees, such as the physics-defying flight of bumblebees or Honeybee hives filled with honey. However, of the roughly 270 bee species that call the UK their home, roughly 90% are the often overlooked solitary bees.
With bee and invertebrate abundance declining globally, including a 59% decline in flying insects in the UK over 5 years as reported by Bugs Matter, there has been a popular rise in the use of bee hotels to support conservation efforts of bees. But poor design and management can actually cause harm. Read on to learn more about solitary bees, the pitfalls of bee hotels and the simple steps you can take to avoid them and promote better bee conservation.
A solitary bee’s life
Unlike bumblebees and Honeybees, solitary bees don’t have a queen and an army of workers with a shared nest. With their vast species diversity, they use a wide variety of nesting behaviours and nesting sites. Some nest in the ground, digging their own nest tunnels nest dug into soil or bare ground, aerial nesters use the tunnels produced by wood-boring beetles in trees and deadwood, hollow stems like brambles, or even walls, while some even use empty snail shells. For a further twist in the tale, over a quarter of our solitary bee species are cuckoo bees, that lay their eggs in the nest of other bees and effectively take them over!
Different solitary bee species emerge at different times of year, generally coinciding with their preferred food plants. In most species the males appear first, often seen circling around nesting areas waiting for females to emerge, sometimes a week or two later. After mating and feeding, females will then seek out a nest site and lay eggs in cells with fertilised female eggs placed towards the rear and unfertilised, male eggs towards the front- so that the males can easily emerge first next year. Each cell is provided with a pollen loaf for the larvae to feed on, which, for mason bees, requires 1,875 flower visits per loaf. It’s easy to see how bees pollinate a third of our food! Each egg is then sealed in a cell, with Patchwork Leafcutter Bees using leaves (Megachile centuncularis) whereas Red Mason Bees (Osmia bicornis) use mud.
The problem with garden centre bee hotels
The first issue with bee hotels is that four out of five of our native bee species are ground-nesting. This means that a standard garden centre bee hotel comprising of tunnels made from plastic, glass, cardboard or bamboo canes which are then hung on a fence is not an attractive nest for many bees. While they do attract mason bees, leaf-cutter bees and their cuckoo bees, the often-poorly designed hotels can sometimes be fatal to potential guests. A lack of overhang to disperse rainwater and the use of plastic and cardboard tubes, increase the opportunity for condensation and contributes toward the spread of fungus, disease and parasites.
Where suitable nesting tubes are used, such as bamboo canes, often they are too short in length, with too large a diameter and contain splinters. Tubes with a diameter greater than 10 mm are too large for many bees and are less likely to be used or require more work from the occupier to make the nest narrower, whilst splinters deter bees due to the potential damage they can cause to their delicate wings. Whereas tubes with a length less than six inches might not deter occupation, but it can lead to offspring imbalances in the ratio of males and females, which can impact populations. Some bee hotels also often contain tubes of only one hole size reducing the number of bee species which will find it suitable.
This is why DIY bee hotels are, in most cases, a preferable option – not only is it a fun garden project, you can customise the design and consider the factors just mentioned.
Setting up your bee hotel
Bought bee hotels often don’t come with any instructions so to avoid creating a bee version of ‘Fawlty Towers’, it is important to know how to site and maintain it. Thankfully, these are easy.
Bee hotels should ideally be put up in the spring, facing south or south east to catch the morning sun, and elevated off the ground without any vegetation pressing against the hotel. This will help bees stay warm and allow them to fly for longer whilst limiting access to potential predators or pests. When a site is chosen, make sure that the hotel is fastened securely, as otherwise this can discourage nesting or can dislodge established nests during windy weather.
Seasonal maintenance
Now that the hotel is secured, leave it undisturbed over the spring and summer, while bees are busy collecting pollen and nectar. You can support them by planting pollen-rich native plants and avoiding the use of pesticides. This is also a great opportunity to check your garden and hotel for signs of nesting.
If you have any pre-existing hotels from the previous season, late spring is the time to clean your hotel and replace old tubes which have been used with new ones, as bees can’t clean detritus and this will prolong the use of hotels and reduce the spread of pests and disease. If in doubt that there may still be something in the tubes leave the old tubes in a sunny location somewhere in the garden to allow insects to emerge.
It’s important to remember that regardless of good maintenance and management, bee hotels will eventually rot as they are made from natural materials and will require replacement. It may be wise to have a few hotels of varying ages in different locations in the garden if space permits.
DIY hotels: simple and satisfying
The simplest nesting tube style of DIY bee hotel involves drilling deep holes, 6 inches if possible, of varying diameters from 2-10 mm into a block of untreated wood, this can be buried upright in the ground or fastened to a fence, post, or wall with a southerly aspect. Remember to include a sloping lip to shed rainwater and not to drill holes all the way through your wood. Use sand-papered or counter-sunk to remove splinters. To create more natural nesting habitat don’t overcrowd the log with holes. This also provides space for you to add a few fresh holes each year.
To support mining as well as mason bees, a simple method is just to provide access to a patch of soil clear of vegetation. This soil can be used as a mud quarry to line nesting cells by mason bees or could be used directly as a nesting site by ground nesting bees such as the Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena fulva), that makes distinctive ‘volcanoes’ in flower beds. If you have sufficient space and are keen to attract more ground nesting bees to your garden you can even create your own bee bank. It can be large or small depending on the space you have available. If you are creating a garden pond why not use the excavated material to create a bee bank? Plant the back with suitable pollen and nectar-rich plants but keep the front bare for nesting bees and other insects. You may be surprised how quickly bees move in!
The big picture
We all want to do what we can in our gardens for wildlife. While a well-planned and managed bee hotel or bee bank can provide new opportunities in a garden for solitary bees and be enchanting to watch, it is more important to make sure that your whole garden works for our wild pollinators. Make sure that your garden is full of the flowers that they need, with different types that flower throughout the year, is kept chemical free and isn’t over managed – why not put away the mower and tools and leave your lawn and beds to get a bit scruffier? It makes less work for you and makes for happier pollinators!