This is a wonderful project and your directions are super! I took the liberty of linking your posts with the photos to this thread. Fairy House 4 Fairy House 3 Fairy House 2 Fairy House 1 I considered putting all the photos here, but they're pretty big and might give some of those on dial-up a fit, waiting to load. I decided not to link directly to your photobucket site, either, leaving that up to you. I know there are those who don't like to click and go away from this page. The trick is to RIGHT click on the link, click on 'open in a new window' and see it without leaving this site. Close the window when you've viewed the photo post. Nell

To all those who have asked about how I will clean it..... I put the house up using two poles, one is secrured into the ground with concrete, the other is the one the house is actually mounted on, I used a large eye bolt and some u-clamps to secure the house pole to the ground pole. The bolt is through both poles about a foot down from the top of the ground pole. The u clamps go around both poles for stability. This setup allows for me to take the clamps off and then loosen the eyebolt just enough to swivel the house pole down for cleaning. This particular one requires two people for that because of the weight of the house during swivel, but it is really the best way I found to accomplish the cleaning need for all my birdhouses.

I sure do like the ideas already. Do a search on the first forum page for mgs by "Kirkus" as he has made some fantastic trellis out of tree branches, etc. The idea for using them for Christmas and holding decorations is great also. Either paint them or wrap red fabric strips around them to look like candycanes and then top with the star, gift boxes or snowflakes. I think those would look really cute. Or use them to hold faux pumpkins. I've been saving this pic for an idea. The pole in the pic is a porch or stair spindle. You could paint your poles orange and black and other bright halloween colors, nail on a wood top base to glue the pumpkin to and then stream down some colorful raffia with stars or moons attached to the bottom of the raffia or even hang down some fall leaf garland . These would swing in the wind and I think look really cute for the holidays.

Leaving aside the house design for a moment . . . For positioning a house, there are a few things to pay attention to. Rarely will you have every single thing right, so just give it your best shot. If you have several houses, you may wish to experiment with a few different places and find which ones do best over the years. 1) Warmth and sunlight. People say to make them east-facing for more sunlight, but they also need sunlight for a good portion of the day, too, to keep them warm. At dawn, it's still might be chilly in early spring and they won't fly yet. Some commercial operations even use supplemental heating to get the bees going earlier, but they have higher mortality if the air itself is too cold to fly. 2) Height. About knee-level to 12 feet is good. I always place mine right at shoulder level so I can check them out and they do fine. 3) Protection from wind and bad weather--especially from several days of bad weather, like a rainy cold front in the spring. Much of this can be solved by having a house with an overhang, just like roofs on human houses. If your house design doesn't have shelter like that, try building a box shelter for it that gives it about a 2" roof overhang. The bees like having a little ledge to land on too, but it's not mandatory. Make sure it's positioned so that any rain drains out of it instead of pooling. 4) Prominent location with a landmark. Bees will find your house better if it is located next to a prominent landmark with high contrast (black and white) or color (especially blue and yellow.) Placing the house on a prominent object that they can see from ~100 feet away also helps them find their way back home, fly to it, and land better than if it's tucked into a tree or narrow space. They need a clear approach. Masons can see blue and yellow and I think green. Paint chips didn't make much of a difference for me, but putting it on a stand-alone shed improved reproduction rates. 5) Stability. They're landing on it and moving around quite a bit. Stabilize it, just like you would a birdhouse. Hope that helps!