As you will have seen and heard in the news, our British bees are in the decline. Loss of green spaces, disease and chemicals are having a devasting effect on their numbers and if this continues, we won’t have enough bees to pollinate our fruit, vegetables, parks and of course, gardens in years to come.
Luckily, there are lots of easy things you can do as an individual to help, including planting bee-friendly flowers in your garden, creating a wildflower area as well as making your own a bee hotel.
To help your garden bee-come more bee-friendly, here’s my step by step guide on how you can:
Make your own bee hotel
1. Take four equal lengths of untreated FSC wood (approx 15cm in length) and screw together to create a frame.
2. Using a selection of bamboo canes of varying thicknesses, cut each cane to the exact same depth of the frame. Ideally the bamboo holes should be between 2mm and 10mm in diameter.
3. Slide enough cut bamboo lengths into the frame until they ‘lock’ into place.
4. Place the bee hotel in a sunny, quiet location in your garden, away from your house and out of direct rain.
5. Stand back and enjoy the fact that your helping our beautiful British bee population and your garden flourish.
As you can see, not only is this a really easy DIY garden project, it’s inexpensive too, especially if you reuse any unwanted timber or reclaimed wood.
I used off-cuts of old planks (one of the bonuses of having an ex-joiner as a husband) and bamboo canes which I’d pruned from my own bamboo plants. Alternatively, if you have neither, (I’m talking wood and bamboo here, not my husband!) you can pick up them up at your high street DIY store.
To help you some more, here’s a short video showing just how easy making a bee hotel is.
If you’ve made your own bee hotel using some other upcycled, or recycled materials, let me know, I’d love to see and share them.