Solitary bee nests

I have some solitary bee hotels. A whole in the wall was used by a leaf cutter bee one year but my hotels wernt used. A bee did climb over the holes on one of them but don’t pay any attention to it after and have ignored both this one and the other one over the years includeing this year and none have been used.
But iv noticed a Mining bee coming to pollinate a plant and leave in the garden this year so it’s not like there isn’t any nearby or in the garden even though it’s for the pollen. I was wondering weather this bee hotel is suitable or not and if there is anything different I can do to improve it and weather anyone here has had any successful solitary bee nests or any successful nests from this sort of hotel

It will be interesting to hear anyones exspeariances with solitary bee nests

I bought one and it wasn’t used so I made my own. I think one of the problems may be that the tubes in the pre-made ones tend to be around 10cm long whereas I’ve read they need to be around 15cms - my home made one is being used a lot this year. I made it from a piece of down pipe guttering and bought some pre cut bamboo bee tubes then put it in a sunny spot about 1.5metres off the ground. I cut the down pipe a bit longer than the tubes so it had a bit of an overhang to keep the rain out. I think you can use other things as well though like plastic bottles or plant pots. I’m definitely not an expert though.
You can see it in my observation here - https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/862913/unknown-fly-id-help-please

Thats interesting. Yes not all tubes are suitable and do need to be 15 cm but A lot of solitary bee hotels arnt designed for just solitary bees but also Bumblebees and other bees or a variety of different types of Solitary bees aswell rather than targeting solitary Bees So they make it bigger or smaller than it’s recommended cm

But Bumblebee conservation trust recommends it shouldn’t be bigger or smaller than it’s recommended cm

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My two boxes were popular last year but so far this year I’ve not had a single bee start to nest.

I made my own boxes, one by drilling various sized holes into a spare piece of fence post and the other with different sizes of bamboo into an offcut of plastic tube.

That is interesting aswell. I wonder why yours didnt nest this year so far. For me The ones I got were bought rather made so maybe they are more interested in made ones rather than most Bought ones