Hi Kristi,

Thanks for taking the great pics! It was a pleasure creating this little Bee Hotel for you and your Leafcutter Bees! I hope they find it a comfortable home :-)

Best wishes to you and your family for Christmas 2024!

Sandra.

Wonderful colours and presentation!
Looking at your bee-house creation it’s just struck me that the bricks with the different-sized mortar holes would be ideal on their own for a bee-house colony in the garden. 
I have quite a few lying around and will give it a go.
What do you use, if anything, to entice the bees to visit and set up home?
Should I put the brick/s in a tree?

For sure give it a go! The holes for leafcutter bees need to be 4-9 mm diameter and about 150 mm deep, so you may need to align the holes of two bricks depthwise and support these somehow?

But other species in need of a home will surely seek single bricks out! So long as the holes are sealed at the back or butted against something.

The hotel in the picture above is packed with all kinds of things of all hole sizes including pipes, so it attracts all kinds of arthropods.

I’m as new to this as you, but I’d suggest hanging/placing yours not too far from their favourite leaf sources. I know they like jujubes and roses! Any plant where you’ve seen those distinctive round cuts.

Signs of cut leaves means they are already visiting, so it’s just a waiting game for them to do the rest!

Other tips are to position it in a sunny or semi-shaded spot with some shelter from rain and wind (like under the eaves of a roof or a window)
and between 1-2 metres above the ground.