BEE B&B

Following on from my last post you may recall that our veggie garden is suffering from a distinct lack of pollinators.  I know the weather has been quite cold and frankly apart from the egg plants there are No flowers in our garden at all to attract them.  So off I went to research and found online a very basic design for a Bee Hotel which quickly morphed into a more elaborate and quirky design for my Bee B&B as I like to call it.

I went straight to Bunnings which as it turns out was a silly mistake as after I came home I discovered all of what I had bought wasn't going to do at all.  I searched around the workshop, the wood pile and the property and found all I needed to make a totally recycled bee environment.

The main part of the house is a drawer out of what once was Lawson’s baby change table which in a fit of madness Brent cut up for fire wood!!!! ARGH!  The table top was saved and has since become the timber frame for a piece of art we bought at the Maleny artists co-op  and takes pride of place on the deck.  The drawers were set aside until they were needed and now I had the perfect project for one of them.  The roof was made from offcuts of timber and the inner will be filled with logs, offcuts and some cut up bamboo stakes.   

Now it seems native bees and other pollinators like about a 6mm diameter hole to crawl inside of and set up home, so with some help from Benny to set up the drill press for me, I went about drilling many, many holes in one end of the wooden sections.  

Now that house and innards were ready to go it was time to attach it to the dead tree stump in the veggie garden.  I asked Benny to saw off a little more of the stump to create a level pad to attach it to.  He cleverly suggested mounting it in such a way that if it ever had to be moved I wouldn't have to remove the logs to do so, by attaching a plank to the tree, and then attaching the house to the plank from the underside.  Therefore the removal of four screws from the base will allow the house to be removed in tact.

I enlisted the help of Lawson to fill the Hotel with the logs and bamboo.  He commented that his time playing tetris had come in handy for just this sort of occasion!  The final piece is something really cute and quirky, with a Motel Vacancy sign out front to let all passing bees and other pollinators know that there is a room with their name on it with a beautiful garden view especially of the flowering eggplant.

Now excuse me while I run off and make the beds in anticipation of the first arrival of our winged guests.