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By providing food and water in your garden, you can encourage native bees to visit. By making them a hotel, you can encourage them to stay!

There are more than 1500 species of native bees in Australia and they play an important environmental role pollinating plants. To encourage native bees into the garden, Sophie is converting an old television into some accommodation - a bee hotel! Different species of bee have different housing requirements, so Sophie is building a mixed material hotel.

HOW TO MAKE A BEE HOTEL

The native bee hotel should ideally be facing between the north and east, in a sunny to semi-shaded position that is sheltered, above 1 metre off the ground, but no higher than 2 metres. Make sure it won't get too hot in summer. Don't forget to provide lots of food and water for your bees. For ideas on plants that attract bees, see Costa's story,

Arrange the different nesting materials by evenly spacing the habitat types within the television casing. Pack it tightly so nothing moves. Fill in any gaps with bundles of pithy stems and bamboo pieces.

* PLEASE NOTE: Extreme caution should be taken when dismantling old CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs and it's recommended that this is carried out by a suitably qualified person.

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