Find out how to attract more bees to your garden and help them out by building a bee hotel, providing water and planting bee-friendly flora below.

Make a bee hotel

You may be wondering why bees would need somewhere to stay when they are very efficient at making their own beehives, but solitary bees need somewhere to breed and thrive, making bee / insect hotels the perfect environment to do this in. Mason bees, Leafcutter bees and Yellow-faced bees use the holes in their bee hotels to lay eggs. These bees are not aggressive so aren’t harmful to children or pets. There are lots of tutorials on how to make a bee hotel but from our friends at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, nesting tubes should be 15cm in length at a minimum and 2-10mm in diameter and should have a solid back, i.e. not opened ended on both sides. These tubes need to be easy to remove and clean as this will keep your bees coming back. You can also buy bee hotels, but you may wish to look out for such things as nesting tube length etc. to ensure the one you purchase will encourage bees to nest.

Did you know?

We have over 250 species of bees in the UK, 24 of these are bumblebee species, one honeybee and the rest are solitary bees. This means that solitary bees can account for some 90% of our bee species!

Once you have your bee hotel ready, it should be located in an area with full sun, 1 metre from the ground and in an area where it has some protection from the weather to avoid the nest getting damp. If you can, you may also want to locate it in an area where you can see the buzzing hive of activity that will be taking place!

Provide water

Bees get thirsty just like us so having water available, or a special ‘bee bath’ will really help them out. Rainwater is sufficient, so you won’t need to replace it regularly for bees to benefit from it. Get a shallow walled dish and place plenty of stone / rocks in it to allow them to climb in and out should they need to. Place it near your bee hotel or near garden flora.

Did you know?

97% of wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, depleting the availability of nectar for bees.

Plant bee attracting flora

Bees are BIG fans of bright, sweet-smelling, bell like or open petalled flowers, so naturally by planting these you will attract more bees to your garden. We’ve made a list of 10 of bee’s favourite wildflowers so you know what to plant, or alternatively you can try out our Bees Please mix brimming with wildflowers that bees can’t get enough of. If you’d like to know how to plant wildflowers for wildlife, you can find out more here.