Bee house bees: who uses one and what they do inside

At a glance

• Around nine in ten UK bee species are solitary rather than colony-forming.
• Red mason bees fly in spring and cap cells with mud; leafcutters follow in summer.
• Each female does every job herself — no queen, no workers, no honey.
• Harmless solitary wasps share the tunnels and hunt garden pests.
• Sting risk in normal use is effectively nil.

The regular guests, month by month

Which of these appear is decided by what already lives within a few hundred metres of your garden. A hotel does not import bees; it gives ones already present somewhere better to nest than a crumbling mortar joint. That is also why a spread of widths matters more than any other feature — a single diameter turns most species away.

What happens inside a tunnel

A female inspects several tunnels before choosing one, often hovering at the face and backing in repeatedly. Once she commits, she flies out dozens of times to gather pollen and nectar, packing it into a loaf at the far end. She lays one egg on that loaf, then builds a wall to close the cell — mud for masons, leaf discs for leafcutters — and repeats along the tunnel's length. Eggs laid deepest usually become females; those near the entrance usually become males, which is why shallow tunnels produce fewer females. When the tunnel is full she caps it and moves on. Inside, each egg hatches, the larva eats its pollen store, spins a cocoon, and waits out the winter as a developing adult.

The whole sequence is described step by step in how a bee house works. From outside, all you see is a gradually increasing number of sealed tunnel mouths, which is the honest measure of whether a hotel is working.

Telling bees from the other tunnel users

Bees look furry and carry pollen: mason bees on a brush of hairs under the abdomen, leafcutters the same, and both look dusted yellow when returning. Solitary wasps are slimmer, shinier and arrive carrying an aphid or small caterpillar rather than pollen. Neither poses a risk to people, and the wasps are a genuine asset because their larvae are fed on garden pests. Social wasps — the paper-nest builders — do not use tunnel nests at all, so a bee house does not encourage them.

You may also see tiny metallic-looking ruby-tailed wasps loitering at the face. These are cuckoo species that lay in other bees' cells. They look dramatic but are a normal part of a healthy nesting aggregation, not a sign of a problem, and there is no need to intervene.

How to get more of them

Three things matter far more than the box itself once it is a good one. First, forage: open single-flowered plants from March through September, close by. Second, mud for masons — a patch of bare, damp soil within a short flight, because dry gardens with no exposed earth leave them nothing to build with. Third, stillness: a hotel that swings or gets bumped is abandoned. The planting side is covered in attracting bees to a bee hotel.

Giving them a nest worth using

Every species above needs the same basic thing: a dry, smooth, dead-end tunnel of the right width and a decent depth, kept still and warm. The Wild Bee Hotel is built to that: 19mm untreated Western red cedar, a hand-formed copper roof that overhangs the face, tunnels from 2mm to 10mm hand-sanded inside and at the rim, and a solid rear panel. It is £39.99 for one, with free worldwide shipping and 30 days to change your mind.