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Came earlier than anticipated! It is well constructed and just such a wonderful gift to give back to Nature..consider what Nature gives to us. The packet of seeds for planting is wicked exciting! We can't wait to see what pops up for our neighborhood bees! We just bought our house last spring, and we got to see our lil bees favoring a small flowering bush during our first summer in our home. So we'll place the Habitat next to it, to give them a place to rest and well... just be BEES! We love it! Thank you so much for this, so very cool.

Loved having a cheaper option to buy one, as these can get expensive. Small cracks in the plexiglass where the screws go, and the bottom was a bit tilted (not sure if this is the normal design or part of the dents and dings issue that made it cheaper), but didnt affect the function at all. I put one in my garden last year and left it alone. At the end of the season when it started to cool down, I opened it to see what was happening. There were a lot of earwigs (yuck), but to my surprise, I also had Leafcutter Bee eggs in there! I brought it inside for the winter to keep them from freezing, and now have placed it back outside to see if they'll hatch. So excited to use this for another season, and help the local native bees populate.

I just purchased this product so I haven't actually seen it in action yet. I took a picture of the seed mixture so you can see what it includes. Many annuals but there are some good perennials as well. The only thing I am not a fan of is the hinges used for the door. They appear to be cheap, but I don't think it will be an issue because you only open the door a few times throughout the growing season.

Last year I drilled holes in a piece of tree trunk and soon bees were flying in and out. I caught one which turned out to be Osmia taururs, a mason bee. By summers end 12 holes were sealed off with mud. This year I bought the Living Bee Habitat because I wanted to observe the bees at work. A few days after putting the bee house up bees started to build cells filled with pollen and closed with mud in the lowest 2 rows. Thus, they are probably small mason bees but definitely not Osmia Taurus which is a non-native species, but nonetheless a good pollinator. The holes I drilled are 10mm in diameter while the holes in the Living Bee Habitat are 6 an 8 mm in height. The other disappointment are the seeds that came with the bee house which I planted at least a month ago. Small leaves are visible but it will take quite some time before I can tell what they are and the bloom will be too late for the bees that are active right now. Fortunately, I have early bloomers in my yard.UPDATE: From late April to early May Mason Bees built cells in the lower 3 rows of my bee house but all bee activity stopped when my lilac and daffodil bloom was over. In the bottom row of the first image a spider and its web is visible. I chased this and 3 more spider out in the following weeks. At the end of May earwigs began to invade the bee house and mess it up (2nd image). I chased the earwigs out too but they came back in even larger numbers. The third image shows the mess the earwigs made by now and I doubt that there are viable bee larvae left. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT!I planted the seeds that came with the bee house and at the end of May pink an red poppies started blooming and also yellow/orange blooms (may be California Poppies?). Obviously, these were way too late for early Mason Bees. The poppies are pretty and the hoverflies love them. So far I saw only one bee on the poppies and this was a Sweat Bee.PS: The Asian Osmia cornifrons was intentionally introduced in the northeastern US in 1977 and several times thereafter. O. cornifrons and taurus are very similar and can be discerned only by close inspection and thus probably arrived together.

I purchased this for my husband for Father’s Day because I knew he would get a kick out of having something like this in the garden. As seems to be the trend, I was also highly disappointed to see all the cracking on the plexiglass around the screws. I’m particularly worried about that top right screw because the cracking goes all the way to the edge and once a couple pieces fall out there will be nothing holding it besides the other cracked areas. It was too late to get him a different gift or I would’ve returned it in a heartbeat. This was not a cheap item and I feel it should have arrived in perfect condition. It is hanging in the garden and we’re both crossing our fingers that it doesn’t totally break leaving us with no plastic at all. Other than the workmanship, it seems to be a nicely put together bee house and a fun idea.

Was excited to be able to view the life cycle of my mason bees, and think this is a great idea. My package arrived promptly, but upon inspection of the actual house I became disappointed. The board where the actual "tunnels" are drilled is warped. The plexiglass was cracked around the screws - not to the determent of using the product, but it looks not so good against that warped back board. The holes are not consistently 8mm either and this is my biggest issue as it is my understanding mason bees are particular about the their nesting hole size. So, for the price I expected a bit more attention to detail. If I had seen this in the store out of the box, I wouldn't have bought it as it was constructed.