Bee-Eaters Using A Nest-Box!

In the first of three articles, Lou Megens shares his experiences of nest-box breeding the lovely European bee-eater during 2019

- Lou Megens

I have known Holland’s Lou Megens for some years now via the Facebook group SBBUK (Softbill Breeders United Kingdom), writes C&AB softbill contributor Gary Bralsford. Over the past three or four years, he has bred some outstanding softbills. This year has been no exception and his breeding of the European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) has to be applauded. The nest-box setup for breeding is ingenious and proved very successful.

Lou keeps a variety of European softbills, as well as some foreign species, in his impressive collection. His aviaries are well planted and of good size and variety. He has large aviaries and smaller ones for the pairs to be selected for breeding. I hope you enjoy his account of breeding the bee-eater.

Lou Megens writes: A year ago, I wrote an article for another publication about my first experience with bee-eaters, where I described the housing, feeding and attempt to breed.

Because I could not make a complete breeding wall due to personal health problems (and frankly I did not want to offer the space needed to do so), I took a decision to make horizontal nest-boxes myself, with a hole in hard sand plus cement, which was stuffed with moist red sand. The bee-eaters dug their holes and I could see them mating, but that was all. No eggs, so not a successful breeding attempt.

After thinking over the problem, I came to the conclusion that it might be a problem of too-short digging pipes (20cm/8in), or too-small nest cavity (15cm/6in square). So I used the winter period to make new horizontal nestboxes with a length of almost 100cm (3ft 3in) and a bigger inner nest cavity (20cm square). I’d noticed the previous year that the birds dug quite a narrow hole (5cm/2in), so this time I used PVC pipes with a diameter of 7cm/23/4in.