Give bees
a home
Juice Carton
Bee Hotel
Give bees a home by making your own Bee Hotel
with our simple step-by-step guide
What does a Bee Hotel look like?
Bee Hotels come in a variety of shapes and sizes,
ranging from a basic log with holes drilled into it, to a
custom-made wooden structure.
What does a Bee Hotel do?
the tube from front to back – usually between eight
and 11 eggs per tube.
Will the bees in the Bee Hotels
produce honey?
No. The Bee Hotels are designed to attract solitary
bees, a species of bee that is also one of the most
Female bees use the hotel to raise the next
generation of bees. First, she chooses an unoccupied effective pollinators of crops and flowers. Unlike
tube in the hotel and collects a ball of pollen about honey bees, they nest alone rather than in colonies.
the size of a dried pea, onto which she lays an egg. What’s more, because they have no honey to protect
She then seals it with a mud wall and starts the next they are docile, so you don’t have to worry about
pollen ball, lays an egg, and so on until she has filled getting stung around them.
How to make a juice carton Bee Hotel
This is a great parent-and-child project.
You will need:
• A fine-tooth saw
• A length of bamboo garden
cane, with openings around
6-8mm in diameter
• Sainsbury’s orange juice carton
• A ruler
• A pencil
• A craft knife
• A short length of wire
1. Saw the bamboo into 15cm lengths, cutting just above the
nodes to create tubes with ends naturally sealed by the nodes.
2. Measure 15cm up from the bottom of the carton’s front and
draw a horizontal line across it. Repeat on the back of the
carton, but 18cm up from the bottom.
3. Rotate the carton and connect the two lines. Carefully cut
along the lines using a craft knife. Fill the carton with the cutbamboo canes.
4. Use wire to fix the hotel so it can’t move. To find out where to
site your Bee Hotel, follow the instructions overleaf.
Note: Don’t be tempted to use plastic straws. Bees have
difficulty getting into them, as the insides are so smooth.
Condensation quickly builds up inside the straws and
bees get stuck on the plastic.
Give bees
a home
As part of
Sainsbury’s
Bee Happy
programme, we
are installing Bee
Hotels like this
one (left) on our
stores.
Where do I put my Bee Hotel?
It’s important to mount your hotel so that the
openings point east, because solitary bees love early
morning sun!
l Mount the Bee Hotel against a landscape feature
like a fence, shed, wall or something like a stake in
front of a hedge.
l The Bee Hotel needs to be fastened so it can’t move
or rotate, so no hanging on a piece of string.(The bees
are very sensitive to nest orientation once they start
using it.)
l Mount your Bee Hotel so that the bamboo lies
horizontally, not at an angle.
l The flight path into the hotel should be
unobstructed, allowing the bees easy access.
l The height of the Bee Hotel doesn’t matter, but
ensure you can check it safely.
l
What happens next?
interesting to try and guess where they got it.
l Blue Mason bees use chewed-up leaf mastic that
starts off green in colour, but quickly fades to a
brown leaf shade.
l Leafcutter bees use discs of leaf cut from nearby
plants or from petals (usually pink for some reason!).
The leaf discs tend to keep their green colour.
The life of the bee in your hotel
Nothing much happens in your Bee Hotel until the
spring. When tree blossom appears, bees become active. The first potential residents of the hotel are the
Red Mason bees in mid-April through to June. The
Blue Mason bees take over pollinating duties more
generally until the end of July, and Leafcutter bees
take up residence until the end of summer.
Maintaining your Bee Hotel
A little maintenance is required from time to time.
Solitary bees are active for six months during
When necessary, replace the bamboo tubes and
spring and summer. Over that time, you will see a
make sure that the hotel always remains fixed in
progression of different species (there are 250 types the correct orientation. If you have been adventurof solitary bee) using your Bee Hotel. The different
ous and made a wooden structure, give it a coat of
colour and texture of the end cap will give clues as to waterproof paint without insecticides. Staff at your
which species have moved in:
local DIY store should be able to give advice on the
l Red Mason bees use mud to close the end. It’s
right paint to use.
Further information on bees
For more information on your hotel residents, visit
sainsburys.co.uk/bees or bwars.com, the webpage
of the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society.
You can live well for less than you thought at Sainsbury’s. Based on price perception data, June 2013. © J Sainsbury plc 2013