To do so, place cotton balls on top of a flat rock. Prop the rim of the pot with a twig or stick to create a small opening. Weight the pot by covering the drainage hole with a rock. This has the added benefit of keeping the bees dry when it rains. Commercial beekeepers no longer use skeps but rather series of stacking wooden boxes.
Butterfly houses are boxes with vertical slits for a front door and tree bark in the bottom.
To shelter toads, which eat insects by the thousands, partially bury a clay pot on its side in a shady garden spot. Place the toad abode near a water feature. Bats are voracious consumers of insects.