I’d been looking for ways to attract both native pollinators and pest-eating songbirds to my yard, and had the idea of making a birdhouse that also doubles as a pollinator hotel. This bird-and-the-bees house is designed to attract chickadees — the interior dimensions and opening diameter are ideal for this bird, which eats all sorts of flying insects. Unfortunately I realized after making this that chickadees aren’t selective about which insects they eat! An improvement in future designs would be to create pollinator hotel birdhouses that specifically attract non-bee-eating birds. The back of this birdhouse opens up for easy cleaning between nesting seasons, and the mason bee nesting tubes are easily replaced after they’re used up.
This structure was designed in Sketchup and the parts can be mass-produced with a CNC milling machine.
