Solitary bees often nest in burrows or cavities and the solitary bee houses you can get from garden centres mimic this and are either collection of tubes [bamboo] or holes bored in blocks of wood.
When I started to get interested in solitary bees I came across someone who makes homes for solitary bees and bumble bees and I bought one of each.
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| Solitary Bee house |
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| Bumble bee house |
George said the problem with the commercial solitary bee houses was that they were impossible to clean out and so dirt and faeces build up and they became breeding grounds for parasites like pollen mites.
To overcome this his home was able to be taken apart and cleaned each winter.
Another advantage was that its sides could be removable so you could see the bees in action. They seemed quite disinterested in me.
It also improved the chances of the cocoons surviving as it was a fairly simple task to remove them, clean them and then store them ready for the following Spring so they can be released at the proper time. I will do a blog about this later.
Also in the tube of nests it can happen that the egg does not develop and the bees deeper in the tube could find it difficult if not impossible to get past the dead eggs and emerge.
I had been thinking of making a replacement Top Bar Hive and luckily my Son In Law is a joiner and was able to tell me what to do and what I needed. I mentioned making solitary bee houses and with his advice made some small test examples.
Type 1
This is the 'block of wood' type.
I drilled some holes in a small block of wood and so the cocoons can be removed I put some straws specially designed for the purpose in the holes. The straws have paper inserts .
The back of the house can be taken off, the straws removed and the cocoons extracted. The following year replacement paper inserts can be added or its easy to make your own using baking parchment paper.
Type 2
This is my attempt to copy the one I bought.
The internal cassette is removable and once the perspex sides are removed the cocoons can be extracted.
The bees can be observed by opening the side panels.
This type does not need the straws and the cocoons are removed by using a flat bladed screwdriver.
Type 3
This is similar to Type 2 but instead of having channels in a piece of wood, the 'nests' are lengths of clear tubing.
At the end of the season the tubes can be taken out and the cocoons removed with a length of dowel.
Cocoon release boxes
As well as the houses, I have had a go at making some small release boxes that the cocoons are put in when its warm enough for the bees to emerge.
I made these small versions to get an idea of what was involved and if something went wrong, I hadn't wasted too much wood.
I intended putting some at the end of my garden where I put the big hive last year and also to put some on the Wild Flower thing that has cropped up.
As with so many bee related things in the last few years, this happened purely by chance.
I have a few chickens in my garden and from time to time the local foxes pay a visit. After their last visit I found my usual supplier in Moggerhanger had closed down but found somewhere else in Sharnbrook.
On one visit I was chatting to the owner who told me he wanted to develop part of the farm that had a pond with ducks on it into an area where people can come and look at the chickens, sit around the pond and buy tea/coffee and cakes. '....and I really want to have some bee hives there for people to look at'.
In the distance I heard warning hooters and alarms going off and people shouting 'No!'
I ignored them.
It then turned out he had an interest in something he called 'bee sputum'. He is an inventor and is aware of the medical properties of the 'sputum' and wanted to try and produce a liquid sputum using bacteria but had struggled to get any help from local bee keepers.
I said to him 'I think you mean propolis' and proceeded to tell him about what I did with it.
In the distance the hooters/alarms and voices got louder.
I ignored them.
In Spring when the bees are active I will be helping him with this.
Next he told me he was setting up something so people could have a weekend on the farm, working with the chickens in an 'escape to the Countryside' sort of way and he was building some old style Romany caravans for them to stay in.
I had already told him I gave talks about bees and that people could come to my apiaries to see the bees and so he said 'could you do that here?'
The hooters/alarms/voices got even louder.
I ignored them.
He took me for a look around the farm and said there was a field that he wanted to plant a Wild Flower meadow as part of the Cafe/Escape to the Country project.
I said I had looked into this and had offered to set one up at Forest Centre and Bromham Mill but didn't get a response.
'Can you hear those hooters/alarms/voices?' he said.
'No' I said.
All this happened in early December but I phoned him again yesterday and he's still very much up for it and I will be going to see him in a week or so to get things started.
Some of my solitary bee houses will be put around the meadow as well as a couple of bee hives.
I also might take the solitary bee houses to Bromham Mill market to see if its worth trying to sell the full sized ones. They will never be as neatly made as the commercial ones but at least I know they work.
The honey bees
My purchases have arrived and I will now put together the various bits to make the two new hives.
I checked Scald End bees last week and all seems well and a few of them needed new blocks of fondant.
Nothing much will happen now for a few months until the weather warms up.
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