Which Bees Use Bee Hotels

The hotels are designed specifically for bees that lay their eggs in small cavities. The most common group of these are the mason bees, in the genus Osmia. People talk about mason bees as if they are one type of bee but there are actually over 300 species found across the Northern Hemisphere.

What kind of bees use a bee hotel?

Bee hotels are used as breeding places by cavity-nesting solitary bees like Mason bees, Leafcutter bees and Yellow-faced bees which naturally nest in hollow stems, earth banks or old beetle holes in dead wood. None of these bees are aggressive, so they are fine around children and pets.

What time of year do bees use bee hotels?

For spring-nesting mason bees, the best time to put up a bee house is in late winter, but other bee species will use the tubes throughout the growing season, so there is no bad time to install one. It may take a while for the bees to find it, but they will arrive.