Make a Bee Hotel for New Zealand's native bees.

Whare o Ngaro huruhuru.
Worldwide we know solitary-Bees need our help. Instructions on making the best ★★★★ bee hotel to give a native solitary bee a place to rest and nest in your backyard. 

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Why	How
Native Habitat & Biology	Construction Instructions

Native bees are black and small. 

Aotearoa's native bees look like flies or flying queen-ants because we think bees are the imported yellow-striped hive bees!!  We might have accidentally killed one or two in years gone by, thinking they were shitty flies.  The NZ government suggests that we put a bee hotel in each backyard, to help the bees escape the dangers of urban life, where they now struggle and die due to pesticides, concrete ground and lawn-mowing.  

A bee hotel mimics bee holes in the ground.

Native bees dig holes in the ground, to live in.  Each bee digs it's own home. 
While native bees are solitary and don't move in swarms nor live in hives. It is safe to guess that native Bees had their ancestral homes. Much like the Termites in South America have been building homes since the world began.   Now we spray grass with insecticides(roundup found on dead bees) and cover the soil with concrete.
A bee hotel provides a conscientious refuge for bees to spend the night.  Each bee species has its burrow hole that fits it.  So a bee hotel provides a range of safe holes for bees to find and live in.  If you make all the holes big, then cockroaches and lizards might come sleep with the bees, but if you use a small hole for a small bee, then its safety increases.   

Guidelines on how to Construct a bee hotel from looking at the data.

Tools needed: 

• A hand Drill with one 3mm bit and one 5mm bit. (Not bigger, not smaller.)
• or a skewer if using kiwifruit wood. 
• Secateurs ($15 at hardware shop)

Materials needed: 

1. Ten to Twenty twigs Natural 1cm 2cm thick and 15cm long. 
2. A plastic bottle
3. 2 meters of string. Wool would do too. 

 Instructions:

1. Cut the top off your plastic bottle, and cut the bottom off, so that you have a nice cylinder with a rain brim on both sides.
2. Now you cut each stick to the correct length to fit inside the bottle cylinder.
3. I just drill one 3mm or one 5mm diameter hole for each stick. Get straight sticks from native/food trees that I've pruned, thanking GOD for making everything that God made. The bees do eat kiwifruit pollen and kiwifruit wood has a ideally sized hole.
4. The holes sizes depend on the data. They can be 5mm diameter 
5. The holes depth can be a minimum 2cm to 6cm deep. Mimicking the bee's natural burrow.
6. All the sticks go TIGHTLY inside the cylinder of an plastic bottle's cylinder.
7. Avoid using any poisons or chemicals on the wood, not even glue. as the bees are very very very sensitive to human poisons.
8. Then i just wrap the cylinder a couple times with long piece of recycled horticultural string and tie it to a tree or fence plank. 

Extra construction Considerations. 

• The plastic should keep the rain off the hole-entrances, so the holes don't flood. That means that ideally, the plastic should be longer than the wood.
• You can drill all the way through to open the hole from both sides.
• You can drill only 5mm holes, but it will be safer for the small ant-sized bees if you drill smaller 3mm holes too.

3 rules for high-class bee hotel:

1. Must be smaller rather than bigger; So not a huge box. 
2. Should not  sway in the wind. So fix it to a trunk or wall rather than a peripheral branch. 
3. Remake it every 2 years to avoid rot, mold or insects and diseases.

Foreign sites such as https://www.otago.ac.nz/socialinsectlab/Bees.html   suggest bigger holes for their foreign insects... that's not ideal for our bees in NZ. 

Native solitary bee species anatomy, biology and ethology.

Using research from the book Landcare Research's Fauna of New Zealand - Ko te Aitanga Pepeka o Aotearoa   Here is a table of species name, the solitary bee's body width , the solitary bee's body length and the solitary bee's burrow's diameter.

Bees (not wasps) present in New Zealand Aotearoa

Origin	Soil or wood hole	Species	Body length (from head to tail)	Body width (looking from above the bee, from left to right side)	Nest hole width	Hole depth	Good food
imported	Soil	Nomia melanderi			7-9mm
endemic	sand	Leioproctus boltoni	10 ±0.7mm	3.2± 0.7mm	4-6mm		Leptospermum scoparium and Kunzea ericoides Actinidia deliciosa Asteraceae Argyranthemum frutiscans
endemic		Leioproctus huakiwi	10.8 ± 0.6	3.2±0.16			Salix fragilis, Carmichaelia stevensonii, Cordyline australis
endemic		Leioproctus imitatus Smith	10.8±0.9	3.4±0.2			Dracophyllum filifolium
endemic		Leioproctus   kanapuu	10.9 ± 0.7	3.4±3			Below 30m above sealevel.
endemic		Leioproctus   keehua	8.0 ±0.69	2.5±0.18
endemic		Leioproctus metallicus	11.8± 0.69	3.8±0.2
endemic		Leioproctus otautahi	6.8	2
endemic		Leioproctus pango	10	3
endemic		Leioproctus purpureus	10.5±0.5	3.1±0.2			Sand by rivers.
endemic		Leioproctus   vestitus	9±0.5	2.7 ± 0.2			Family of Summer creatures that fly in summer predominantly. Sand dunes by rivers.
endemic		Lamprocolletes fulvescens , Leioproctus fulvescens:	10.4±0.89	2.8±0.23			Because of the distinctive orange-yellow of the vestiture, L. fulvescens is perhaps our most readily recognisable native bee.
endemic		Leioproctus   hudsoni	8.2 ± 0.69	2.5±0.15			Hilly ranges of north island (untouched)
endemic		Leioproctus maritimus	7.3± 0.69	2.2 ± 0.13
endemic		Leioproctus  monticola	9.7±0.84	2.8±0.26	horizontal		20m to 1620 meters above sea , Leptospermum scoparium
endemic		Hyaleus    agilis	7.3± 0.77	1.8±0.12	3	11	5 to 2900m above sealevel Muhlenbeckia australis) The nest consists of an entrance hole 2.7 mm across which opens to a cavity about 5 mm long which is lined with cellophane-like material. This is followed by a cell made of cellophanelike material which is 6 mm long. a cavity extending the length of the twig measures about 5 mm across,
endemic		Hylaeus   capitosus	7.0±0.79	1.7±0.2	4 to 6mm		Fly from November to march. found nests in the hollow stems of the previous summer’s Linaria purpurea (purple Linaria) and Lupinus polyphyllus (Russell’s lupin.j Of 12 nests collected during 1977, the greatest depth that showed evidence of bee activity was 260 mm. Cells were frequently separated by gaps of 20–30 mm, The external diameter of stems ranged from about 4–6 mm. Where the stem was 5 mm wide a cell was 3 mm wide and 6.3 mm long. Access to the interior of stems was by a hole in the side of the stem, or from a point where the stem had been broken off. Cells consisted of a cavity lined with cellophane-like material.
endemic		Hylaeus    kermadecensis	5.0 ± 0.47	1.5 ± 0.08			Scaevola gracilis Confined to Kermadec Islands.  anobiid tunnels (Coleoptera: Anobiidae) and trunk of the native Myrsine kermadecensis
endemic		Hylaeus   relegatus	7.8 ± 0.79	2.0 ± 0.16			H. relegatus is the largest and most common of the endemic hylaeine bees in New Zealand, but because of its black, fly-like appearance in flight, and the lack of occurrence of high numbers in any one area, the species is not as prominent as many Leioproctus. The ready occupation of trap nests indicates that numbers can be increased by providing nest holes. The similarly ready utilization of a wide range of native and introduced flowers suggests that a lack of nest sites is probably the main factor limiting its numbers.(page 112 from LandCareResearch)
endemic		Hylaeus (Prosopisteron) perhumilis	4.1 ± 0.35 mm	1.1 ± 0.13 mm			Both sexes were caught emerging from borer holes
		Hylaeus (Prosopisteron) matamoko	5.3 ± 0.53	1.5 ± 0.17			Black, except for narrow yellow band on paraocular area adjacent to compound eye, extending from opposite antennal sockets to bottom of compound eye
		Hylaeus (Prosopisteron) asperithorax (Rayment)	3.9+-0.32	1.2+-0.1			Wahlenbergia pygmaea Selliera radicans Disphyma sp Mimulus sp Hebe sp.
endemic	Fine sand	Lasioglossum			1-2mm
		Lasioglossum   sordidum	5.5 ± 0.38 mm	1.7 ± 0.14 mm			bees nested in man-made nest sites built for occupancy by the introduced alkali bee Nomia melanderi. The substrate ranges from ocean beach and river bed sand through fine silts to glacial till, pumice/tuff, packed gravel and moist clay and crumbling clay which is bare or almost bare of vegetation. emergence holes were numerous, tumuli up to about 5 mm high and more than 20 mm across were appearing around some tunnel entrances
		Lasioglossum (Austrevylaeus) mataroa	5.2 ± 0.34 mm	1.6 ± 0.09 m			Capsella bursa-pastoris
indigenous		Lasioglossum (Chilalictus) cognatum	5.3 ± 0.38 mm	2.0 ± 0.14 mm	2	60	On 14 October 1965, a nest was discovered about 2 m up in a near-vertical sandstone face at Island Bay Road, Birkdale AK. Records are incomplete, but the tunnel which was about 2 mm in diameter ran almost horizontally into the sandstone for about 60 mm
adventive	Wood hole	Euryglossina proctotrypoide	3.8 ± 0.32 mm	1.1 ± 0.09 mm	1mm		Kunzea ericoides Leptospermum scoparium
adventive		Hyleoides concinna	12.3 ± 1.07 mm	4.0 ± 0.36 mm	3-8mm		Harris (2002) found bees making serial nests Fauna of New Zealand 57 115 in abandoned Cerambycidae (Coleoptera) burrows in stems of Lupinus arboreus and Acacia longifolia var. sophorae (Fabaceae) in the sand dunes at Castlecliff WI In Australia Rayment (1961) set out bamboo stems within which bees constructed nests. Houston (1967) found that old longicorn beetle holes in stumps, logs and fallen branches seemed to be preferred nest sit
imported		Osmia coerulescens			10mm
imported		Megachile rotundata			6mm

key

Endemic, which occur only in New Zealand:	Indigenous, which also occur in Australia and which originated from there, but which probably reached New Zealand without human involvement:	Adventive, assisted inadvertently by humans: from Australia	Imported, purposely from the Northern Hemisphere for economic reasons:
(all 18 species of Leioproctus  , 6 of the 8 species of Hylaeus, and 3 of the 4 species of Lasioglossum).	(Lasioglossum cognatum).	Hylaeus asperithorax; H. perhumilis; Hyleoides concinna  ; and Euryglossina proctotrypoides;Anthidium manicatum;	Nomia melanderi, Osmia  oerulescens, Megachile rotundata, Bombus terrestris,  B. hortorum, B. ruderatus, B. subterraneus, Apis mellifera