Wild About Gardens, for the benefit of people and wildlife

Build a bee hotel

Bee, Richard Burkmar

Ladybirds eat aphids and blue tits wolf down caterpillars - but did you know there's a super-efficient pollinator you can encourage into your garden?

It's known as the red mason bee, and besides being a gardener's friend it's a delightful creature in its own right. It's not aggressive like the honey bee, and it doesn't swarm. Instead the female spends most of her life searching for hollow stems in which to lay her eggs. If you can provide something suitable, she'll come to you.

To make a hotel you'll need:

Cut the plank into four pieces to make a rectangular frame. Drill guide holes for the screws to stop the wood splitting and assemble the frame. Snip your stems into plank-width lengths, discarding any bent or knobbly ones. Include some really big stems (cut with a fine saw), even though they're no use to the bees; they speed up the next stage, look smashing and help shelter lacewings over winter.

Lay your frame on a tilted surface and carefully pack it with stems. Only as you add the final few does the whole lattice miraculously lock solid.

Hang your hotel on a sunny wall, sheltered from rain, and wait for the bees to investigate in spring. Having selected a stem, the female lays an egg inside with a store of pollen for the grub to eat when it hatches. She seals up the cell with a plug of mud, and starts again. A stem can end up with five or six cells.

Mason bees are much more effective pollinators than bumble bees, and a thriving population in a garden is thought to improve yields of fruit and veg. But just as importantly they are great fun to watch as they scurry and buzz to fill a hotel you can put together for the price of a few screws.

I could go on. Sometimes parasitic flies and wasps break into the bee's egg chambers and lay their own eggs inside. You can see when this happens because there's a pinprick in the mud plug. The invaders' babies either eat all the pollen and starve the bee to death, or eat the young bee itself as it grows.

All being well, the bees hatch in spring, almost a year after they were laid as eggs. The oldest wakes up first but can't get out because it has several siblings in front of it. So it breaks down the mud wall and bites the rear end of the bee in front. This process is repeated until the front bee gets the message and emerges, leaving the way clear for its brothers and sisters. The males spend a few frantic weeks trying to mate before dying, and the females then set about a new season's nesting. A supply of good, friable soil nearby (think molehill) helps improve their nesting efficiency.

There's a booklet all about these bees: The Red Mason Bee, by Christopher O'Toole, Osmia publications £3.95. It's sold by the Oxford Bee Company, the people who make the commercial nest kit.