Wednesday Wonder

Wednesday Wonder: Bug Hotels!

Luxury Bee Hotel!

We love Wednesdays here in Bellevue, as we get to share some of our favourite special wonders with you. This week it’s Butterfly Belle‘s turn and she looks after all the cute bugs and butterflies in your garden.

It’s a very busy job and she wondered whether you’d like to help her? You see, some little bugs like to have safe, cosy places to shelter in over winter or to make nests and lay their eggs. Bugs like solitary bees – bees that live alone and not in hives or honeycombs – buzz around the garden looking for holes or tunnels where they can make a home. Little ladybirds do, too!

You can help them out by making little bug hotels for your garden, but your guests won’t just stay a night, they’ll stay for months and help make your garden a more beautiful place!

Would you like to open your own special Butterfly Belle bug hotel? You’ll need a grown-up to help you. Here’s how to do it…

Butterfly Belle’s Bug Hotel

Make a Bug Hotel

You need:

Lots of hollow bamboo sticks with different-sized holes
Saw or jigsaw (for a grown-up)
A sturdy plastic flower pot or a small wooden box (ideally 15 to 20cm deep)

  • Ask your grown-up helper to saw your bamboo sticks so that they’re the same height as your pot. Try to use sticks that are hollow all the way down if you can.
  • Now it’s time to start putting your rooms together – stand up your pot and pop the bamboo sticks inside. Keep putting them in the pot until they start to stand upright.
  • Ask your grown-up helper to help you slot the last few sticks in to make sure they’re all squeezed tightly together and won’t fall out.
  • Now you need to find the perfect spot in your garden for your bug hotel. Solitary bees like to get warm, so find a sunny fence or wall and put your bug hotel at least a metre off the floor.
  • We put ours between two tree branches below a canopy of leaves – this is great, as it will stop the rain from soaking your little guests!
  • Once your big hotel is in place keep checking to see if any of Butterfly Belle’s bug friends have moved in!

Bug hotels are fab as they look after the solitary bees that help your garden flowers to grow, and they look after the little ladybirds who eat the naughty aphids. If you make one, we’d love to see your pictures – especially if you spot any lovely bugs, too!

Email them to us and we’ll send you a special colouring-in page to say thank you! Love and magic dust from the Magic Belles in Bellevue xxx

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