Build a bee hotel

 

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning this activity

• Ask everyone to collect a tin can, clean it, and bring them in. You’ll need enough for everyone to have one each.
• If you don’t have any paper drinking straws, you could roll up pieces of scrap paper or newspaper.
• Set up a space to create your bee hotels, this activity could create a bit of mess so think about going outside or putting something in the floor of your meeting place to help make cleaning up easier.

Learn about the bees

1. Gather everyone together in a circle, and explain you’ll be learning about bees and making a bee hotel.
2. Ask everyone if they know what food bees produce. Hopefully people will say honey – but did they know that bees have a big role in producing a lot of the food we eat? Why are they important for people? What do they do for biodiversity? Think about the variety of plants and animals in a certain space.
3. Now, ask people what you could do to help to protect bees. We can give safe spaces to shelter, such as these simple bee hotels, and plant wildflowers that are bee-friendly.

Make a bee hotel

1. Give everybody a clean, dry tin can.
2. Everyone should tie a long piece of string around the bottom of the can, making sure there’s enough string left over to tie it to a tree or branch.
3. Everyone should roll up pieces of cardboard or newspaper into tubes, then tape them to hold the tube in place. Make sure that they’re hollow, with open ends for bees to burrow in.
4. Ask everyone to gather enough bamboo canes, rolled up card or newspaper tube, and straws to fill their tin can. 
5. Use the scissors to cut the straws and newspaper or card tubes, so that they are nearly the same length as their tin can. They should make them a few centimetres shorter, so they don’t get wet.
6. If you need to cut the bamboo canes, an adult should use a saw to cut them down to size. 
7. Next, use a piece of cardboard and loosely roll it up, then place in the tin can, so it touches the edges. This will help to keep everything in place. 
8. Ask everyone to push their canes, rolled up card or newspaper tube and straws into the tin can.
9. When they’re finished, they should add smaller twigs and stems in the gaps to make sure it’s tightly packed.
10. If they want to, people could paint and decorate the outside of the can using acrylic paint. Why not paint it to look like a bee?

Set up your hotel

1. Gather everyone back together and ask people where they think they might put their bee hotels. They should go in a sunny spot that’s at least 1m off the ground. It’s best to choose somewhere that’s sheltered from the rain.
2. People could think about outdoor spaces at home and places they visit. Some meeting spaces may have outside space. There may be locally managed green spaces, such as city farms and allotments.
3. Explain to everyone that it’s best to move the bee hotel in autumn and winter – they should go into a dry, unheated space, such as a shed.