Native Plant and Wildlife Gardening Classes in September!

 

This September, my wife and I will each teach a class through the Missoula County Public Schools Lifelong Learning Center.  We each taught classes last year; Marilyn taught a class on composting, and I taught one on native bees and building a native solitary nesting bee box. 

A successful class!

We both enjoyed teaching such wonderful and engaged students so much, we will be back!
This time, on September 15, I will be teaching a one evening class on gardening for wildlife, obviously one of my favorite topics!
Here is the description of the class from the Lifelong Learning Center's website:

• Do you want to create a sustainable landscape that attracts and encourages wildlife? If so, join David as he teaches you to provide all the features to draw birds, butterflies and other wildlife to your garden. This is a one night class where you will discuss the various components of creating an oasis for you and for wildlife in your garden.

Native plants attract insects!

Two days later (on September 17), Marilyn, one of the best native plant botanists in the state, will teach about native plants in the fall, how to plant, what to plant and how to identify.  What a great native plant and wildlife garden week!

Fall colors in the native plant garden

Here is a description of her class from the Lifelong Learning Center Website:

• Who says it’s time to put your garden to rest? With the right plants and methods, fall is the prime time to create a beautiful color landscape. By using native plants (perennials, shrubs and trees) your fall garden will look beautiful for you and for birds getting ready to spend winter in Montana. We'll discuss plants with late blooms, leaves of all colors, and which shrubs bear interesting fruits and pods. We'll also talk about fall planting methods and how much to tidy up the garden for winter.
  

To register click here.

Hope to see you at one of these classes!

Make a Bee House Class Follow-Up

  

I had a lot of fun talking about native plants, native insects that use them, and our native pollinators at the Make a Bee House Class I taught last week through the Missoula County Public Schools Lifelong Learning Center.   

Twelve people participated in the class, some had never used a drill, others had never really thought there was a difference between a bald faced hornet, western yellow jacket, European paper wasp, etc… but all were eager to learn and excited about native bees!

Everyone had great questions and I think were pretty excited to install their houses and see who shows up.  I hope people keep me posted about their boxes.  I also know most were eager to build more.  Like I mentioned in the class, if nothing else building the bee houses and watching them is a great way to learn about out native bees and other insects.  

Ultimately the class made 14 boxes, and only a little blood was shed.   

I got all the materials at my favorite building material reuse center, Home ReSource, including Douglas fir 4x4" and 4x6" for the boxes, cedar shakes and tin ridge cap for the roofs, cedar fence boards for the backs and a variety of nails and screws to fasten it all together.  Home ReSource has it all.

This just in....I just got an email from Cate from the class showing where she installed her bee house- right next to her vegetable garden!  Beautiful!

Marilyn, my wife, made a box too (she was a test subject for the class; she survived), and this one will be installed at the Native Plant Garden at 8^th and Grant this Thursday when we do a spring cleaning, and weeding of this neighborhood native plant garden.   Everyone is welcome to attend, and we will even be giving out free native plants!  See I was able to turn this post into a plea for help!  Here is a link to the event page with more information, but you can just show up at 8th and Grant, at 6pm on Thursday (April 30), ready for an hour or so of light work in this little garden.  Bring gloves and your favorite weeding tool if you have one.

This box is heading to the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant!

The idea of ground nesting bees interested a lot of people and prompted some discussion of what we can do for them (since they comprise the majority of our native bees), and I thought I would pass a long some timely information.  One was a recent blog post on how to provide habitat for native ground nesting bees from my favorite native plant and insect personality, Heather Holm of Restoring the Landscape with Native Plants, and author of Pollinators of Native Plants.  Be sure to follow her on Facebook, and any other social media you can.  And buy her book.  She is a wealth of information on native plants and insects, and a fantastic artist, graphic designer, educator and landscape designer! 

The other experience with ground nesting bees came to me yesterday (unexpectedly) when I was hunting in a snow storm in the mountains east of Missoula.  As I was sitting under a ponderosa pine escaping the cold and wet snow, a bumblebee came buzzing by me visiting some flowering lupines and other snow covered plants.  I immediately thought of how I explained to the class that our native bees will tolerate a much wider range of temperatures and conditions than Eurasian honeybees.  So I took out my phone to get a picture of a bumblebee pollinating flowers in the snow.  Then the bee landed on a patch of bare ground and started furiously digging, probably a excavating nesting burrow.  I captured this action on camera:

The garden as a bird feeder

In general, our garden is our bird feeder- we planted native plants and created habitat to suit birds' primary food- insects.  And it has worked well, though it is not your traditional "birder's garden".  I feel like I have written this post before (and probably better), but it is a good reminder this time of the year.  For several years I have had mixed feelings for bird feeders, and I have stopped using bird feeders through summer, spring and fall.  I have stopped using seed feeders altogether, and occasionally and seasonally use different forms of suet feeders (see below), including native plant suet we prepare ourselves (click here).

Our goal is to make our garden our feeder by planting native plants and providing habitat and this sustains a variety of birds, insects and other wildlife. This has been our goal, and even in a small, city lot, you can have success.

Our giant ant hill in our front yard is a Northern flicker's favorite.   Through the winter, flickers dig this up for tasty grubs (and defenseless slow moving adults in the cold).

In winter, we add some feeders for birds, but not the typical ones people are used to seeing, though non-traditional feeders, yet they are more natural. for example, my favorite, carcasses.
These parts and pieces are left overs from butchering our game meat during hunting season.

Although the aesthetic might not be for everyone, carcasses (from winterkill, and predator kills) are the original suet feeder (click here for more information). 

Even a little scapula can be an enticing feeder for chickadees, nuthatches, flickers, and downy woodpeckers.

In addition to providing housing for native solitary nesting bees, mason bee boxes, aka "larvae feeders" provide food for nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and chickadees that pick the overwintering larvae out. Here a chickadee uses its wings for improved leverage to get one out

But perhaps more important in our garden are the natural and original nest boxes- snags.

Birds are a source of food too. With a lot of birds around, come things that eat them.
Here a sharp-shinned hawk eats a cedar waxwing in our garden.

All that it left was the beak

So this winter, consider your feeders, and perhaps shift to some natural or unconventional feeders.  Feeding birds is a lot more than seed feeders, and it is a lot more effective with non-traditional means.

Our Garden on the Evening News

We are excited to have our garden featured on this week's Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' Outdoor Report. These brief videos are weekly news reports about Montana's great outdoors. This segment is a little different than most, since it is about backyard gardening, but we think Winston Greely did a great job making the connection between your landscape and nature. We thank him for putting together a great video introducing people to the concept of using native plants to create wildlife habitat in their own yards.

Insect collection update: the year of the Bombus

Indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus insularis)

Last year I started an insect collection in order to document (and learn) all the insects visiting our garden. This project has been so much fun and such a rewarding endeavor.  I am constantly amazed by the abundance and diversity of insects using our garden, and I am always fascinated by the ecological interactions going on in our little yard.

Last year I was obsessed with bee mimics- a variety of species, genera, and families that mimic bees and wasps.  The ecology of these animals, and deception they employ, are really fascinating.  This year, I am fascinated by bumble bees (Bombus species)- the gentle giants of Hymenoptera. 

There has been a lot written about many pollinators, and even bumble bees in particular.  Many species of bumble bees have declined for a variety of reasons- and many of them are the usual suspects- habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, etc… but another thing that intrigues me about bumblebees and their conservation is their nesting requirements.  This relates directly to conventional landscaping.  Bumblebees nest in the ground in underground burrows, so, more than anything, they need access to the ground: bare dirt they can burrow in to. This behavior puts them at odds with lawns, which cover most landscapes.

Bumble bees are not alone in being affected by lawns, indeed most of our native bees (over 75%) nest in the ground. However some species nest above ground in hollow cavities- holes formed by woodpecker drilling, from other insects boring into trees and even in hollow stems of plants like milkweed (Asclepias speciosa). These are the cavity nesting bees, like mason bees (Osmia species), that nest in bee boxes. For our other native bees (like bumble bees), bare ground is what they need. But unlike most of our native bees, which are solitary nesters, bumble bees are social and live in colonies.

The original mason bee box

Everyone likes bumble bees, and along with ladybird beetles and butterflies they are probably the best known insects in the garden (and most liked). But I realized I knew very little about them, despite that they are large, colorful, and easy to observe. Surprisingly, bumble bees can be hard to identify, and this speaks to their social nature and community structure. Within a species, males, workers and queens are often very differently colored, and are even present at different times of the year. Combined with the fact that there are local variations and over 20 species in west-central Montana, even though they are large and easily observed (and captured) they can be tough to identify.

So far I have collected and identified 12 species in our garden. Most of these are pretty common species, perhaps with the exception of the western bumble bee (B. occidentalis). Though locally common, the western bumble bee is in decline throughout its range and has even been locally extirpated, making it a species of concern throughout its range now. Historically they ranged from the Pacific coast east into Rockies and south to New Mexico.

Although several guides and resources are available, there is no one guide that is perfect for species found here in Montana.  As a result, in order to identify bumble bee species  I have been using a combination of guides including this key from Discover Life,  a guide to Bumble Bees of the Western United States by the US Forest Service, a guide to bumble bees in North America by bumblebee.org  and other online resources, like bugguide.net.  Even with all these resources I still have some questions, and I still have a couple of specimens I have yet to satisfactorily identify.  This is not to scare people off- it is a lot of fun learning about them and identifying them and many are actually quite easy to identify.  One of my best references has become my own insect collection.

The interesting thing is all the diversity that is out there, and all the interesting behaviors and ecology.  And all this can be found in your own backyard, provided you remove some lawn, plant some native plants, and take a look at what happens. So, last year, for me it was all about the mimics, and this year, bumble bees have my interest. Fortunately, there are hundreds of more species in my garden to keep my attention for years to come.

Essentials for your pollinator garden: sap, moths and beetles.

This time of the year, the best thing you can have in your pollinator garden is sap.  There are probably lots of ways to come up with a sap feeder, but the easiest one is to let borer beetles and clearwing moths do their job- more on this in a minute.

Adult popular clearwing moth (Sesia tibialis), a yellowjacket mimic

In my garden, butterflies often owe their early spring survival to some unlikely sources- the larvae of aspen borer beetles and poplar clearwing moths.

Adult aspen borer (Saperda calcarata)

These larvae tunnel through quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), which kills the trees, but the journey provides so much along the way (I've written a lot about this relationship- click here for more information).  As one response to the attacking insects, aspen force sap out of the tunnels.

Larvae of the aspen borer beetle (Saperda calcarata)

Over the last couple of weeks we've had several butterflies in the garden including a few Milbert's  Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti) and even a Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa, our state butterfly) yesterday afternoon.  Judging from local blogs, Facebook, and actual interpersonal communications with people, other "out and about"  Missoulians are noticing them, too.

You may be wondering what they the butterflies ares eating, because if you have been looking around for the last few weekend, you'll have noticed that not much is flowering yet.  As a result, this is one of the most critical times of the year to support butterflies in your garden (or at least attract butterflies to your yard).On warm March days you can see the sap running (slowly) out of the holes in the trees, and when the first butterflies emerge this is where they go to eat.

An adult Lorrquin's admiral (Limenitis lorquini) feeds on sap on our aspen .

What butterflies need is a food source timed for their survival.  When many of our overwintering butterflies emerge from their hibernacula they are hungry.  With not much of anything flowing now the best food source is sap.

If you want pollinators, plant a lot of native plants and get out of the way!

Upcoming Native Plant and Wildlife Gardening Programs: from Helena, MT to Gillette, WY

I have a few speaking engagements this spring in that I am really looking forward to in Helena, MT, Hamilton, MT and Gillette, WY.  If you live near these towns, I hope you can make it.  The garden programs will be a lot like my blog, but live, and without cats.

Here are some details:

Helena, Montana:  Kelsey Chapter of the Montana Native Plant Society 

Tuesday, March 13, 7:00 pmLewis and Clark Library, Helena Montana

Free and open to the public!

Program title:  Gardening with Montana Native Plants for Montana Native Wildlife

For more information, go to http://www.mtnativeplants.org/Kelsey_Chapter

Hamilton, Montana:  Green Thumbs Up Gardening Club

Thursday, April 12, 2:00 pm

Bitterroot Public Library

Contact Susan Duff for more information 961-5455

Gillette, Wyoming:  Wyoming Master Gardener Conference 

Rethinking Gardening in the 21st Century 

Friday, April 27,  8-9 pm, Gillette College

Program Title:  Gardening with Native Plants 

This conference is open to the public and you do not need to be a Master Gardener to attend. The conference will bring together authors, Master Gardeners, vendors, horticulture experts, keynote speakers, and backyard gardeners to share enthusiasm and knowledge.

To view the complete conference agenda, click here.

I hope to see you at one of these programs!

These are not the Hymenoptera you are looking for

In May I started an insect collection.  I simply wanted to document all the insects in our garden.  Apart from our vegetable garden we have landscaped our yard with plants native to the Missoula area, we have over 100 species, and we don't water any of it.  More than 60 species of birds have used the yard, and annually three species of birds nest in our nest boxes.  I figured with all this diversity, it would be interesting  to collect, document and learn about all the insects that come here too.

I got my inspiration from this from various sources, including Douglas Tallamy's papers and books, and my friend Jen who is starting the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium.  

I have taken a couple of entomology classes in college (aquatic and terrestrial) and I thought I knew the deal.  I was wrong.  I had no idea how much diversity there was, and how interesting so many of these insects are.  I have now refined my collection to mainly flies (Diptera), bees, wasps and such (Hymenoptera), beetles (Coleoptrea), some moths (Lepidoptera),  bugs (Hemiptera), and grasshoppers (Orthoptera).  I'm not even really collecting butterflies (I'm not that great at preserving them), dragon and damsel flies (Odonata- I'm not very good at catching them), really tiny things (not good at mounting them), and nocturnal insects (I'm diurnal).  Despite these various limitations and restrictions, I have collected well over 150 species of insects, and the summer is only half over.

Through all this, the thing that has stood out as the most interesting is all the mimics.  Beetles that are hairy and imitate bumblebees, flies that mimic wasps, moths that mimic yellow jackets, bees that mimic wasps, and so on. So far, I have collected over 20 genera of these mimics and as the summer continues I am sure there will be many more.

At the top of the post is one of my favorite yellow jacket mimics- it is actually a flower fly (Spilomaya sp.).  It does such a good job mimicking a yellow jacket that its deception is nearly complete.  It flies like a yellow jacket, in flight it extends its front legs- these have black fronts that make it appear to have longer antennae, like a yellow jacket.  The wings have a dark leading edge, that give it the appearance of a yellowjacket at rest folding its two sets of wings (like bees and wasps have), but it only has one (like any fly). 

The insect below is a moth- a poplar clearwing moth (Sesia tibialis) that mimics a yellow jacket.  It is very convincing- as its name suggests, its wings are clear to complete the mimicry.  I was fooled at first, too.  The first time I saw one in our garden, it was crawling out of the ground at the base of one of our decadent quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), and its wings had not expanded yet.  I thought for sure it was some solitary ground nesting yellow jacket or hornet, so I gave it its space.  I kept a eye on it, and the closer I looked, the more I realized it was not a yellow jacket at all, but a moth.

Adult poplar clearwing moths lay their eggs in the cracks or crevasses of stressed popular, aspen and willow species, and similar to the poplar borers in our garden (Saperda calcarata), the larvae of the clearwing moth bore into the tree- pushing out sawdust and feed for a couple of years before they emerge.

This is another fascinating chapter in the aspen ecology story I have been telling as I track the aspen in our garden (click here, here and here for more information.

It is really only when you see its face, you recognize how harmless the moth is.

Now that I am paying attention I see so much more than I ever knew was out there.  I have learned so much and have a new appreciation for insects, their life histories, and the importance your garden can have.

2011 will be remembered as the year of the aphid

WARNING!  This blog post contains explicit images of mucivory.

Every year, and every season, is different in the garden.  This year has been cool and wet, and some plants have really benefited like the arrow leaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), and some are having a tougher time like bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva).  That is why diversity in the garden is so important; and interesting.  The biggest benefactor, this year seems to be the aphids, though I am not sure why.  The abundance and diversity of aphids this year is incredible (on our native plants that is, not on our eggplants and peppers). 

A few years ago I was excited to find the red goldenrod aphids had finally colonized a little patch of goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis).  Last year though, none were in sight. 

This year it seems there are aphids on many species, different aphids on each of our goldenrod species (S. missouriensis, S. canadensis, and S. ridgida). 

Not just goldenrods, though.  There are aphids on our big basin sage (Artemisia tridentata - though they are there every year), red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea), 

chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), and 

Wilcox’s penstemon (Penstomon wilcoxii). 

This is even the first year I’ve seen aphids on our Ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa).  There are over 350 species of aphids, and most are host-plant specific.  That is, they only feed on a species of plant or plants that share a common genus. 

Compared to when our eggplants or peppers get aphids, when our native plants get colonized by a lot of aphids, it rarely results in damage to the plant.  Actually, our big basin sage seems to thrive in the presence of aphids. 

On our Ponderosa pines we have the giant conifer aphids (Cinara spp.).  These feed on the branches and stems, not on the leaves, and few arborists even consider these a threat.

All these aphids, though are really providing a lot of food for all the birds in the garden that glean insects from the leaves.  Also a benefactor is all the insects that feed on their soft bodies, which I am learning about thanks to my latest project- my insect collection. 

So far that has been a wonderful experience, and I am learning so much, even more than I expected (thanks again to Jen Marangelo from the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium ).  I am simply amazed by the diversity of bees, and flies that are wasp- and bee-mimics.  I am even really impressed by all the species of ladybird beetles in the garden- the sworn, mortal enemy of the aphid.

My new garden project- an insect collection

One new project I didn’t add to my list of garden projects for 2011 is documenting all the insects in our garden in the form on an insect collection.  I am really excited about this project. I haven’t made an insect collection since my college entomology class, so I am eager to relearn some identification and preservation skills.  One of my inspirations for this project came from Jen Marangelo (who was in that college entomology class with me) who is starting the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium. 

Jen, who has quickly emerged as the insect-human liaison in Missoula, was eager to help me get my little project underway and quickly gave me a list of tools, equipment and supplies I needed to get stared.  Today a box of everything I ordered arrived (I should note that it took over a month to get all these supplies from a company I won’t be promoting anytime soon.). Nevertheless, all my stuff is here, and I am excited to start searching for, documenting and "preserving the biodiversity" of our garden!

If you don't know about the Missoula Butterfly House, it is a great cause, and in a moment with Jen and seeing her enthusiasm for the project, you know it is going to succeed.  The mission of the Missoula Butterfly House is to promote an appreciation and understanding of insects and their relatives through public education and the development of an invertebrate education facility- a year round tropical butterfly house and an insect zoo with live insects, spiders, etc and hands-on exhibits.

The Missoula Butterfly House is a wonderful idea, and needs your help to become established, so consider becoming a member- membership is only $35 (and tax deductible).

I'm going to go outside and look for some more bugs. 

Upcoming Native Plant Gardening Workshop, April 2 in Divide, Montana

Once again, I'll be giving a talk at the Native Plant Gardening Workshop in beautiful Divide, Montana, co-hosted by the Calypso Chapter of the Montana Native Plant Society and the Big Hole Watershed Weed Committee. Thanks again to Catherine Cain for organizing the workshop, this should be a wonderful event, on April 2. Last year about 80 people came out for the workshop and I look forward to attending it again.

My presentation will be a follow-up to the talk I gave last year and my talk will focus on gardening for wildlife, including bird houses, feeders (natural and home made), pest (squirrels, starlings, house sparrows, etc...) control, pollinators, creating habitat, and of course native plants.

Also, Kathy Settevendemie from Blackfoot Native Plants Nursery will talk about garden design, choosing the right native plants, proper installation, maintenance and pests.

And I am sure there will be a lot of great native plants for sale from Blackfoot Native Plant Nursery and Catherine Cain's nursery Southwest Montana Landscapes. Also, if it is like last year, there will be a lot of vendors selling things for the garden like seeds, including native plant seeds from Native Ideals Seed Company.

Native bee nesting update

A little while back a wrote how to make a house for solitary nesting bees in 5 minutes (part of my wildlife garden stuff in 5 minute series) and above is a video of the bee house I installed at the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant.

So, here is the update after the bee houses have been in place for about two months...

There has been a lot of activity in the last couple of weeks, and not just at my house, but at all the locations where I set them up- at the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant (aka the 8th Street Pocket Park) and at Home ReSource. Also the activity seemed to be shared by not just the mason bees (Osmia spp.) but also various leaf cutting bees (Megachile spp.), and even some brood parasites like the cuckoo bee (Coelioxys spp.). The cuckoo bee frequents the nest boxes because they lay their eggs in the nests of the leaf cutting bees. These were the most active bees in our backyard tonight. All are really cool.

Here is a great guide to the common bees of western Montana, with an emphasis on native solitary nesting bees by Jennifer Palladini, and it would be a great compliment to your bee house to keep a copy close by.

By the way, although it is recommended to have them face east, the ones facing south have much more bees in them (I should that this conclusion is based on a small and unequal sample size so, please, view these results with caution).

Although it seemed expected that the native bees would find the boxes in our backyard and at the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant, I am most excited they have taken up residence in the nest box in the native plant garden at Hom ReSource. Home ReSource in located in an industrial setting, a place with few native plants, and few gardens. Their presence in this little patch of habitat is especially gratifying.

Though I questioned the efficacy of these boxes for conservation, etc.. in my last post, they are just flat out fun to watch and a great tool for teaching and learning about our native bees. So, by all means build one and install one today. Better yet, make a few and give them as gifts (and include the bee guide).

Build a Mason Bee House in 5 Minutes

It is National Pollinator Week, and I figured a way to commemorate this was to build a mason bee nest box (more on this in a little bit). For Missoulians, a great way to celebrate this is at Thursday night's native plant sale with information about pollinators- including mason bees.

Unlike non-native honey bees that nest in hives with many others, native mason bees are solitary and each female builds her own nest. I think it's cute that although these are "solitary" bees they all nest right next to each other in communities, but evidently they have it worked out so they maintain their own identity. Anyway, they nest in cavities in logs, snags and decadent trees from woodpecker or wood boring insect holes. They also nest in hollow reeds and canes (like raspberries). As a result of the loss of native plants, removal of dead or dying trees, etc... many suspect that they are nesting site limited and by providing artificial nest sites (houses) we can help their populations.

Mason bee houses have been around for a while but I’ve been reluctant to build a house for them. Maybe it’s because I liken these houses to butterfly houses (that don’t work and cater toward yellow jackets). Or maybe it was because I thought by providing snags in the yard and or borer hole-filled aspen; we were providing more natural places for mason or other solitary nesting bees. So I did some research and in addition to a surprising amount of literature on the topic, I came across a great literature review that evaluated the efficacy of intervention (people trying to help out bees) on bee conservation: Bee Conservation: evidence for the effects of interventions Lynn V. Dicks, David A. Showler & William J. Sutherland Based on evidence captured at www.conservationevidence.com.

Here is a brief summary:
Yes, mason bees do use the nest boxes (so they have a leg up on butterfly houses). However, in one study in California, introduced European earwigs and introduced European leafcutter bee species used the boxes, and in one instance these introduced species were more common in the houses than native bees.

What about plastic nest cavities or using plastic straws?
Nest boxes with plastic‐lined, plastic or paper tubes were worse for bees than houses with simpled bored wood nest holes. The main reason was mold and even increases rates of parasitism. This is not surprising that just drilling out wood holes more naturally mimics a natural hole in wood. Don’t use plastic or straws.

But the big question: Does this help populations on a larger scale, that is does it boost local populations? In reviewing several studies, the answer is unfortunately not really. The results were mixed, in some studies it seemed to help for a while in other studies there did not seem to be an effect. Kind of disappointing.

Despite the less than exciting results, I decided to go ahead and build some and see for myself. If nothing else, they are pretty fun to have in the garden and I am looking forward to checking on them and learning more about mason bees. But really, the thing that I think put me over the edge is I learned that these make great flicker feeders. I figured this out inadvertently since all the descriptions I read about making mason bee houses involved a phrase like “cover with chicken wire to keep birds out”. At first I was puzzled, since I knew no birds could get into the 5/16” diameter hole. But then I figured out what keeping birds out really meant.

This is the second installment of building things for your wildlife garden in 5 minutes (click here for the first- a suet feeder). This bee house is a great project to do with kids or just with the kid inside yourself. This is also a great project to make out of scraps you have on hand already, or a great use for recycled materials commonly found at Home ReSource.

Materials:

• 1/4” peg board*
• 4"x4"x 12” or so
• 1"x6"x18”*
• 5/16” drill bit
• Drill
• Saw
• Screws
• clamps*

*optional

Step one
Cut 4x4 to size, cut the top at an angle to help shed water

Step 2

Use pegboard as a template for holes, align on 4x4, and drill 5/16” holes, about 3" deep (if you are using a 4x4- just don't drill all the way through the wood). The bees really don’t care if the holes are nicely arranged, and really you could skip this step of putting on a template, but I think it looks nicer.

Now, if you want, you are done. But, there is more if you are interested.

Step 3

Install top and back with screws- having the back on this allow for easy mounting on walls or posts. Now, you are done (again). All that is left is to install, and here are some tips:

• Place 3-5 feet off the ground
• Place east or south-east facing in a place where you can easily observe it
• East is best so the little fellas can get all warmed up quickly by the morning sun
• Once you install them, don’t move them until the winter
• You can place several in various locations in your yard or give to neighbors for their yards
• Try to place near a source of mud