We are always eager to find ways to encourage native bees to take up residence in our yard. We have plenty of unmowed areas and a few dead snags, but we wanted to get these little pollinators closer to the garden. Treebeard made a couple of bee condos and drilled holes of various diameters. As you can see from the third photo, we already have tenants!
Next we plan to make a sand mound for ground nesting bees/wasps. We had a bunch of residents last year when the house was under construction so I expect we will be successful.
Tread lightly and share your space :)
7 comments:
Very cool. I've been toying with some ornate designs for bee condos mimicing rustic japanese snow lanterns - must get some put together.
tai haku,
It didn't take long for the bees to find the boxes. And it didn't take long for the parasitic cuckoo wasps to find the bees! Such drama in the yard.
cuckoo wasps too? Very cool!
how about a beehive and benefit from the honey too?
www.wildlifearoundus.blogspot.com
carol,
We used to keep bees. At one point we had 12 hives. Neither of my children ate store-bought honey until they were in college (and they didn't care for the "bland" stuff from the store!). Perhaps we will get back into it one of these days.
We have a lot of bumble bees visiting our garden and one day when I have time I'm going to track a couple of them to see if I can find where they are nesting. Of course, with our garden being tiny, in a terrace of other tiny gardens I need to show some sense and not go clambering about too much on my neighbours land! We have a stick pile at the bottom of the garden that I hope will be a safe nesting place for bees and other interesting things. I love the idea of a purpose built bee tower block, seems like a good way of harbouring them rather than rats (which is probably what really lives in our stick pile...)
Bird,
A stick pile is on my wish list for the yard. We also plan to construct a bumblebee nest box -- we found instructions for one on an entomology blog.
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