Bees & Pollinators›Build a bee hotel
Build a bee hotel bees will actually use.
Most bee hotels sold in stores are the wrong size, the wrong material, and never cleaned.
Not honey bees. The quiet ones.
A bee hotel is for solitary bees: mason bees in spring and leafcutters in summer. Each female raises her own young in a tube, seals it, and leaves. No hive, no honey, nothing to defend, so nothing to sting you over. About a third of our native bees nest this way.
- Mason beesFeb to May
- LeafcuttersMay to Sep
- No stings
Pencil lead to pencil wide. Six inches deep. Closed at the back.
Size is the whole trick. Bees choose tubes between 3/32 and 3/8 of an inch across, and they want them 5 to 6 inches deep with a solid back. Shallow tubes raise mostly males. A tube open at both ends is a hallway, not a nursery. Mix the widths and different bees show up.
- 3/32 to 3/8 inwide
- 5 to 6 indeep
- Closedback
Stems, paper, untreated wood. Nothing that sweats.
Bees nested in hollow stems and beetle holes long before we had drills. Bamboo, reed, dried sunflower and elderberry stems are perfect. So is an untreated block lined with paper straws you can pull and replace. Plastic and glass sweat and grow mold. Treated or painted wood inside the holes keeps bees out.
- Bamboo and reed
- Paper liners
- No plastic or glass
Morning sun. Rock solid. A roof over the door.
Location decides more than the design. Face the tubes east or southeast for morning sun and shade from the afternoon. Mount it 3 to 6 feet up, screwed to something that never swings, roof overhanging the front. Then give the bees flowers within a hundred yards and a patch of damp bare soil for mud. Our plant list handles the flowers.
- Face east
- 3 to 6 ft up
- Screwed down
- Out of the sprinklers
Fist to shoebox. Then swap the tubes.
A hotel is a nursery, and nurseries collect mites and mold unless the bedding gets changed. Keep it small, fist to shoebox, and replace the stems or liners every year or two. Hang it out in February, watch the tubes fill through spring, leave it alone through fall, and tuck it in a cold shed over winter if you like. Never a heated room.
- Febhang it out
- Mar to Junthe show
- Jul to Octleave it
- Nov to Jancold shed, optional
The cheapest bee house is a patch of dirt.
Pick one sunny spot of bare, well drained soil a couple of feet across, and then do nothing to it. Tiny volcano shaped holes in spring mean it worked.
- Bare soil, no mulch
- No weed cloth
- No sprinklers
- No foot traffic
- A little loose sand is a bonus
Fifteen minutes, an hour, or nothing at all.
Three ways to get there. Every one follows the same rules above.
The stem bundle.
The easiest, and honestly the best. Stems are what bees nested in before we came along with drills.
You need: hollow or pithy stems (bamboo, reed, dried sunflower, elderberry, fennel), a clean can or short length of PVC for a roof, pruners and twine.
Steps
- Cut stems 6 to 8 inches long, just behind a node so the back is closed. Mix widths from a pencil lead to a pencil.
- Pack them snugly into the can, open ends out, so nothing rattles.
- Fix it level, roof overhanging the front by an inch.
The drilled block.
Sturdier, and it lasts for years. Drilled holes cannot be cleaned, so line them with paper you can pull and replace.
You need: a 6 inch deep piece of untreated wood or a log round, drill bits from 3/32 to 3/8 inch, paper straws or rolled parchment for liners.
Steps
- Drill 5 to 6 inches deep, never through the back, about 3/4 inch apart.
- Sand the entrances smooth. Splinters keep bees out.
- Slide in liners, add a roof, mount it solid.
Leave the stems standing.
No building at all. Many bee researchers quietly prefer this one, because it spreads nests out the way nature does.
You need: any perennial with a hollow or pithy stem (sages, sunflowers, buckwheat, coyote mint, roses), pruners, and a little patience with an untidy corner.
Steps
- Leave dead stems standing through winter.
- In early spring, cut them to 12 to 15 inch stubs. The open ends are the doors.
- Leave the stubs alone for a year. New growth hides them by summer.
Things people ask about bee hotels.
Do bee hotels actually help, or are they just cute?
They help if you keep them small and clean. A small hotel with fresh tubes gives mason and leafcutter bees somewhere to raise the next generation, and those are some of the best pollinators a yard can have. A giant decorative one left up for five years becomes a mite and mold factory. Size and cleaning are the whole game.
Will it bring stinging bees near my kids?
No. The bees that use hotels are solitary. There is no hive, no honey and nothing to defend, so they have no reason to sting. Mason bees and leafcutters are about as gentle as insects get. Kids can stand a foot away and watch them come and go. They should. It is the best free show in the yard.
What if nothing moves in?
Give it a full season before you judge it. Then run the basics: morning sun, rock steady, something blooming within a hundred yards, bare damp soil for the masons. If all of that checks out, it may simply take a year for a bee to find the place. New tubes and a sunnier spot fix most empty hotels.
Do I need to buy mason bee cocoons?
No. Southern California already has the bees. Buying cocoons can even bring in bees and diseases from somewhere else. Put up a clean hotel near flowers and let the locals find it.
Should I bring it inside for winter?
Not inside the house. The bees sealed inside those tubes need winter cold to finish developing. If you want to protect it from rain and birds, move it into a dry, unheated shed or garage from about November to February, then hang it back out in late winter before the first warm week.
It is full of wasps. Is that bad?
Almost never. The small, slim wasps that move into bee hotels hunt aphids and caterpillars, ignore people, and pollinate while they are at it. Think of them as tenants who also take out the pests. Yellowjackets and paper wasps do not nest in tubes.
Can I do this on a balcony?
Yes. A coffee can of hollow stems on a sunny east facing railing works, especially with a pot of something blooming next to it. Fix it firmly so it does not swing, and keep it out of the drip line.
What about the bees that nest in the ground?
They are the majority, about seven in ten native bees, and no hotel helps them. What helps is a sunny patch of bare, unmulched, well drained soil, even a couple of feet across, that you leave alone. That is the cheapest bee house you will ever build.
Join the Hive.
Honest wireless on nationwide 5G, no contracts, and 2.5% of our profits working for the bees you are about to house.
Tunnel sizes, depths, placement and cleaning guidance follow the Xerces Society's nesting habitat recommendations and UC Cooperative Extension. Timing is written for Southern California. Last reviewed September 2026. Photos via Unsplash.