Bees, Pollinators, Patterns

Bees~ Pollinators ~ Patterns

Make your very own bee hotel and support our tiny pollinators!

Small sticks and twigs, bamboo canes, natural materials that have fallen off trees or plants (tree bark, pine cones, hollow reeds, dried moss). Large plastic container, plastic bottle, clean tin cans, recycled wooden pallet, wire mesh.

scissors, tape, newspaper, twine/string, nails, hammer, saw.

RecycleOldWooden Furniture

To maximise the chances of your bee hotel being lived in, maintenance and careful situating is super important. Regular conservation and cleaning will result in a more successful bee hotel and a healthier population of bees. With no cleaning, fungi, debris and parasites can occur which can be damaging to the bees.

ï Place your bee hotel in a location that gets the most sun, facing south/south-east, making sure it is at least 1 metre from the ground.

ï It’s important for the bee hotel to be in a stable, fixed position that will not move in the wind or be easily knocked or dislodged.

ï At least every couple of years replace all of the wooden tubes and blocks in the hotel with fresh ones to remove any waste, dead bees or larvae.

ï In the Autumn and Winter move your bee hotel in to a dry space to protect it from the damp and wet weather, remember it’s the damp not the cold that kills the larve. Not only will this protect the larvae and adult bees waiting to emerge in the spring but it will mean that your bee hotel will last longer. You can move the hotel outdoors in the spring, from March onwards.

ï Place your hotel near foliage but ensure that nothing will obscure or put the hotel entrances into shade.

At this time of year, you should see bees coming and going collecting pollen which can be seen gathered on their rear legs in small clumps.

March can be a very challenging time for bees, especially the honey bee. This is the month where there is a higher chance of bees dying of starvation due to inadequate honey stores from the previous Autumn. As the days grow longer, the Queen bee will start laying more eggs and the colony will use more of its food stores to feed the brood (eggs, larvae and pupae which are kept in the hexagonal wax cells of the combs in the brood nest).

Not only can you make bee hotels from recycled and found materials, you can also create different habitats in your garden such as: rotten wood piles, compost heaps, south facing banks and short grasses, these are all great homes for solitary bees.

Additionally, you can sow bee friendly plants which provide plenty of tasty food for them to enjoy. There are a few things to consider first to make sure it is bee friendly. Choose pollen and nectar rich plants that flower throughout the year, plant flowers in clumps and sunny spots as much as possible, bees love blue and purple flowers especially but also like pink, yellow and white.

There are over 250 species of bee in the UK - over 103 of these can be found in Scotland. In Scotland there are 23 bumble bees, 79 solitary bees, and 1 honey bee, with an addictional 4 species now thought to be extinct and another two species with insufficient data.

Solitary bees can be amazingly effective pollinators and as the name suggests tend not to live in colonies like bumble bees or honey bees.

Bees are responsible for pollinating 1/3rd of all food we consume and at least 80% of all wildflowers on the planet.

Specifically, the solitary Red Mason bee species (Osmia) are excellent pollinators and are 3 to 4 times more efficient at pollinating than the native honey bee (Apis mellifera mellifera).

Permaculture is a foundation for creating a sustainable way of living through efficient, harmonious and practical methods that is supported by gathering knowledge from many different localities such as agriculture, ecology, architecture, science and technology.

There are a vast number of permaculture patterns in nature, a few to mention are spirals, waves, streamlines, cloud forms and branches. Take honey bees for instance, honey comb is made up from the six-sided shape - the hexagon, a pattern that is repeated throughout nature in rock formations, fly’s eyes and snowflakes. The hexagon is known for its especially efficient design, leaving minimum unused space between objects.

Permaculture is guided by a set of 3 ethics:

The waggle dance is made up of two parts

1. The ‘return phase’ which involves the figure of eight movement in which the bee circles back, alternating clockwise and anticlockwise.

2. The ‘waggle phase’ is a short straight run in which the bee vigorously waggles its abdomen

Did you know honey bee’s can communicate through dance? The dance is performed by a triumphant forager, when they have found a desired source of pollen, nectar or water and want to share this benefical information with the hive. The waggle dance allows the bee to communicate the quality, distance, direction and identity of the food source, enabling fellow worker bees to find and forage the resources collectively.