Build a solitary bee house - PEP BB animal.sand.bee

My bee house seems to working!

Here's a unique take on a carpenter bee house. I was going to build a mason bee house, but I have a carpenter bee problem (they're burrowing into the structural 4x4s on my back porch. And I want the bees! They pollinate my fruit trees. I found the "frame" at a local thrift shop, and my brain went to work. It's all natural softwood construction with metal hinges. I filled the shelves with kiln-dried untreated pine 2x4, and wedged them into place with untreated bottom trim from a previous house project. The holes are 1/2 inch "starter holes" because carpenter bees like to burrow out the cavities themselves. I just gave them 32 starting points. We'll see how well it is inhabited when the warm weather returns, but after the larvae hatch and I cover the holes in my structural 4x4's they'll be forced to inhabit this lovely home or go somewhere else (hopefully not too far away).

Hope you don't mind I did it as a video, it's easier to show what I did than if I used a bunch of pictures.



j

Something I just thought of, with the doors open and the pegs exposed, I could rig something up like little bee watering containers there and knock out another BB! I gotta give this some more thought...

j

Jim Garlits wrote:Here's a unique take on a carpenter bee house. I was going to build a mason bee house, but I have a carpenter bee problem (they're burrowing into the structural 4x4s on my back porch. And I want the bees! They pollinate my fruit trees. I found the "frame" at a local thrift shop, and my brain went to work. It's all natural softwood construction with metal hinges. I filled the shelves with kiln-dried untreated pine 2x4, and wedged them into place with untreated bottom trim from a previous house project. The holes are 1/2 inch "starter holes" because carpenter bees like to burrow out the cavities themselves. I just gave them 32 starting points. We'll see how well it is inhabited when the warm weather returns, but after the larvae hatch and I cover the holes in my structural 4x4's they'll be forced to inhabit this lovely home or go somewhere else (hopefully not too far away).

Hope you don't mind I did it as a video, it's easier to show what I did than if I used a bunch of pictures.

j

While I was moving and putting siding on my chicken coop, I was gently buzzed many times.
One ambitious bee even tried to nest in the screw hole I had predrilled, an unsafe adventure for everyone.
I needed a quick solution.

I looked up local bee info through our extension office and found in early spring mason bees like roughly 8mm holes.
I went with 3/8", though I'm considering making more with 5/16" or 1/4", along with a less uniform design next time.

I drilled ~4" deep holes into the side of an untreated cedar fence board using the drill press, cut it to a reasonable length, then mounted it on my chicken coop (away from chicken access). I saw a resident the very first day

I present for your consideration, The Bee-Line:

I try to build at least one more of these each year. Plenty of scrap wood around here and a simple build. I started out using small bamboo/rivercane for the tubes but that was too time consuming. Been using old Japanese knotweed stalks for a couple years which work well. I noticed the dead stalks of a perennial umbellifer that a landmate planted looked good for this and gathered them. I believe it's Korean Giant Celery or something. It might be my new favorite due to the length between its nodes being up to a foot and a half. I include many hole sizes for a broad range of species, I like to watch the diversity of crazy looking little bees that show up. Difficult to identify but the book "The Bees in your backyard" helps get it to the genus many times. Installed on the woodshed. Added photo strip of my previous builds.

Built a Mason bee house with a range of hole sizes and mounted it under the roof of my she shed porch ceiling.

In early spring we collected dried, fallen, conveniently hollow milkweed stems and with some scrap wood used them to make Solitary Bee houses. The idea with these was to offer a variety of opening sizes to the bees, which I’ve read better mimics nature and attracts multiple bee species, which in turn helps limit diseases and pests associated with monoculture environments. Of course this is experimental for me (EVERYTHING around here seems to be experimental!) so if any of you have opinions/experience I’d love to hear it.

I have a question - is that what this piece of wood is that's mounted on my hundred-year-old barn?

The previous owners painted over it. Gross. Do you think I can save it?