Bee Houses

Basic Construction of a Bee, Bug, or Seed Gourd House

As summer slips into those first cool days of autumn, it is time for me to prepare my flower gardens for the winter months ahead. The gourd bird houses that I made last spring need to be cleaned and checked for needed repairs, the fallen leaves needed to be raked and moved to the compose pile, and its time to harvest the flower seeds for next year’s plantings.

This year I am adding a new little project to my autumn list – Bee Houses! My region has lost most of its honey bee and other insect populations because of the intensive use of pesticides and herbicides. More and more I depend on our native wild bee population to pollinate my gardens. There are several excellent articles on the net for creating wild bee homes, that offer other, fun ideas that you can do along with this Nest Egg Gourd Bee House project.

The original idea behind this project was to make a few simple, quick bee and bug houses that I could place throughout my garden as winter nests – miniature bird houses. I wanted them to be as biodegradable, eco-friendly as possible, so I chose to use some of my thinner shelled, small craft gourds and dried plant materials from my yard for accents.

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irish