How to attract bees to a bee hotel

At a glance

• Position beats every other factor: morning sun, rigid fixing, 1–1.5m high.
• Offer several tunnel widths from 2mm to 10mm rather than one uniform size.
• Nearby mud and flowers in bloom from March to September do real work.
• Occupancy usually climbs sharply in year two, not year one.
• Sugar water, bright paint and stocking up on cheap hotels do not help.

Eight things that work

1. Hang it before March. Mason bees choose tunnels within days of emerging — see our timing guide for the full calendar.
2. Morning sun on the tunnel face. South or south-east, never north; warmth at the entrance in the early hours gets bees flying and provisioning sooner in the day.
3. Fix it rigidly. A hotel swinging on wire reads as unsafe to a nesting female; screw it to a wall, fence post or shed at 1–1.5m so it does not move in wind.
4. Offer several tunnel widths. 2mm–10mm covers mason, leafcutter and smaller species, so whichever bees are locally common find a fit — see our tunnel diameter chart for the detail.
5. Provide mud. Red mason bees seal cells with wet, clay-ish soil. A patch of bare damp earth, or a shallow tray of soil kept moist within 20m, makes a measurable difference to nesting rates.
6. Keep something in bloom from March to September. Pulmonaria, fruit blossom, hardy geranium, borage, comfrey, lavender, scabious and single-flowered dahlias cover the season without needing a dedicated wildlife border.
7. Stop using insecticides. Sprays anywhere near the nesting front kill provisioning females outright and contaminate the pollen stored for their brood.
8. Be patient and leave it alone. Do not open, clean or reposition it mid season. Occupancy usually climbs sharply in year two as the first generation returns to nest close to where it hatched.

Three things that do not help

How to tell it is working

Watch on the first warm mornings: a female hovers, reverses into a tunnel, comes back out, and tries another a few times before settling. Days later she arrives carrying pollen visible on her hind legs or the underside of her abdomen. Then mud caps or chewed leaf discs appear across several entrances — that is a completed nest, several cells deep, and the clearest possible sign the siting has worked.

What to check before assuming it has "failed"

A single quiet season rarely means the hotel is wrong. Before changing anything, confirm the face gets real morning sun, that it does not move in a breeze, and that the tunnels are dry and free of the wear covered in our common problems guide. Most so-called failures turn out to be a shaded wall or a hotel hung too low, not a fault with the tunnels themselves.

Start with a hotel worth siting well

The Wild Bee Hotel gives you the parts you cannot fix later with any amount of good siting: hand-sanded tunnels from 2mm to 10mm, 19mm untreated Western red cedar, a hand-formed copper roof overhanging on every side, a solid rear panel and a rigid mount. £39.99, free worldwide shipping, 30-day money-back guarantee — the only exception being a hotel bees have already moved into.