In message , Ophelia
wrote
Christina Websell wrote:

I am very interested in Sacha's comment, about having a 'hive' for
bumble bees. Have you heard anything about those?

Yes. They are easy to make, have a look on the web. I've made
several and they've all been taken up.
I've also drilled a log with holes for solitary bees and some of
holes are blocked up with clay, so I guess a few solitary bees found
it a good place to lay their eggs.

How do you attract them, or do they just find it?



About 5 years ago I put up 100 empty tubes. In the first year I had
around 10 occupied - the bees found there own way there. Each tube has
4 or five bees with 80% being female. In the next season many of the
bees return to occupy more tubes.

It's taken around 5 years to build up to around 200 occupied tubes and
if I had put out more tubes this year I'm sure I could have had another
300/400 tubes fully occupied.
--
Alan
news2009 {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk