I’m wondering what guests I will get in my garden hotel

DON’T tell the planning inspectors, but I’m building a hotel in my garden. It should hopefully be large enough to accommodate dozens of guests, and I expect to have a busy spring and summer season.

The construction works have begun in my shed, and would undoubtedly fail building regulations. That said, so long as it doesn’t blow down it should be fine.

I thought I would tuck it away in a sheltered spot at the end of the lawn, south facing and with a pleasant view. Facilities will be basic, accommodation unfurnished, and only single guests are encouraged to stay.

The two-foot high hotel in question is for solitary bees, and will consist of pieces of log and cob bricks with holes drilled in them, along with horizontal lengths of hollow bamboo. The idea is to provide nesting sites for species of wild bee, and while one can buy these ‘hotels’ for bees in garden stores, I thought it might be satisfying to make one.

We have more than 250 species of bee in Britain. Take out the single species of honeybee and the 25 bumblebees and the rest are solitary bees which don’t tend to live in colonies or raise their young in the same way.

This huge diversity of solitary species includes mining bees, mason bees and leafcutter bees, which construct their nests in the ground or in walls, mud banks, tree holes and other suitable crevices. If you spot little volcanoes of earth on bare patches of ground these may well mark the nest tunnels of mining bees, while a small bee popping in and out of an old nail hole in a wall might be a mason bee.

Attractive varieties include the red mason bee, the tawny mining bee, the ashy mining bee and the hairy-footed flower bee – the subject of an inspiring Be Wild Buckfastleigh WildWatch video on YouTube featuring entomologist John Walters.

I’ll soon be hanging up the ‘Vacancies’ sign by my mini hotel and seeing what guests turn up...