Building a Bee Hotel, a winter project for the garden
With the British weather really doing its worse of late there has been very little time or chance to actually get in the garden or on the vegetable plot to get anything done, other than checking fencing and clearing debris that has blown in! I will begin sowing seeds soon and over the next few weeks every spare inch in the conservatory and on windowsills around the house will be taken up with seed trays full of seedlings as ever in January and February. I do have another little project though that I will be working on in the potting shed out of the wind, rain and cold temperatures. There are, apparently, over 250 types of bee in the UK, there are twenty-four types of bumblebee alone, and they are incredibly important little creatures. Around 90% of UK bee species are solitary bees, a group that includes mason bees, mining bees and leaf-cutter bees amongst others. Solitary bees aren’t like honey bees that live in hives. As their name suggests, they make their nests on their own and lay ...