Central Beekeepers Alliance

Giving a Home to Solitary Bees Posted: 28 Jan 2009 12:59 PM PST Lots of people would love to keep honey bees, for various reasons, but they can’t do it because they live in cities or suburbs with by-laws against beekeeping. But that doesn’t mean they can’t help take care of the earth’s essential pollinators in other ways! The Urban Bee Barn During a lively conversation at the grocery store checkout, one day, a man in line told the rest of us shoppers about his innovative version of urban beekeeping: a “bee barn” among the birdhouses near his patio. This “bee barn” provided an artificial habitat for native bees in and around this man’s downtown property. It was basically a shaped chunk of wood, decorated to look like an old-fashioned barn with a hip roof, that had all sizes of holes drilled in it. When he put it out in the spring, wild bees — solitary bees — took up residence in the holes, picking whichever hole was the right size for them, and stayed all season. The bees pollinated gave the man’s children a wonderful close-up view of Nature in action, and pollinated his patio tomatoes. Win-win! I didn’t ask this man where he’d got his “bee barn” because I figured it would be easy enough to track down a source on the Internet… but I haven’t yet found anything that’s quite like what he described. The Bamboo Bee House However, I did find a couple of ““>bee house” or two on Amazon.com, like this one made from a lot of pieces of bamboo. Since the bamboo is hollow and comes in different thicknesses, naturally, according to how far along the stalk the section has been cut, it makes a suitable home for bees. Wooden Block Bee House You could also make your own bee house, like Lise Mahnke, who wrote up her construction method (complete with photographs) on Dry-Ideas.com, based on the bee house built by Robert Engelhardt (shown at the top of this page). Or follow the instructions in this “how to” video of the Build a Bee House” “science project” lesson from YES magazine: There are more than 1000 species of native bees in this country, according to Pollination Canada, and they’re struggling to survive in this modern world the same way that honeybees are — so a frustrated wannabe-beekeeper could do a lot worse than to set up a home for those wild bees! Post from: Central Beekeepers Alliance

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