Condemmed Bee Hotel

In the Home is Where the ... post, we saw that an insect, likely a bee or wasp, had used the hollow rail of a garden gate as a nest site.

Bee next boxes or "hotels" can be made or purchased. We have a some of both about the yard. Including this one:

We acquired it several years ago and if you look closely you'll see some of the tubes are occupied.

It seems that some other critter, likely a woodpecker, noticed this as well. As it does not appear that any tubes were breached, nor plugged in that area, I wonder if there were other insects in the space between the tubes?

It could very well be. It turns out that most of the bee hotels sold in garden centers are sadly poorly designed with a solid, unremovable back. Meaning they can't easily be cleaned out each year.

This one was an exception, but I did two things wrong. It may not be obvious from these images, but this I mounted the nest to a board, sealing the back, which I then mounted to a post (the post of our bat box). That negated the good design feature of this nest, the ability to clean out the tubes at the end of the season. That was mistake number one, which directly led to mistake number two. As I could not clean out the tubes I should have removed the whole thing after a season or at most two. It's been up for years. This allows parasites and nest predators to become established. Thereby defeating the purpose of the nest, of promoting a healthy new generation of pollinators.

As part of the fall cleanup this year this, and one other bee nest box, will be coming down. And I'll be making new ones. Made for easy annual maintenance.