A Bee Motel

We’d been home from our travels for some time and had developed a naturally based productive garden on our 570 sq mt urban block (total size, including the house) This was awesome fun mixed with hard work of course. Then we noticed that our very urban spot wasn’t really attracting many bees.

I did some investigating and learnt that there are beings called individual bees. They don’t do hives, you’d more than likely see them trying to enter a small bamboo end or some other small hole.

As individuals these bees aren’t really obvious until you start to look for them and it seemed that these were the solution to us not having to manually pollinate our crops so I set out to learn more.

One of the computer searches turned up Kin Kin Native Bees, a local business who are very helpful and sharing with their information. Their page about Solitary Bees was inspiring so I directed himself to replicate a Solitary Bee Haven at our place.

We had removed a Buckinghamia (Ivory Curl Tree) in the process of setting up our permaculture gardens and kept the trunk, just because it's hard to throw out anything that took that long to grow. It was very hard wood, but the drill worked and we ended up with a piece of tree trunk with different sized holes drilled into it.

The best place to hang it was the next discussion. We needed a place where the bees would feel comfortable but a bit protected from the weather. The Bee Motel initially got hung on the eastern side of the chook (laying hen) house in the sun and in what we felt was a safe place.

Well, the bees didn't take long to come and it wasn't long before we saw black spots on the yellow lid of the nesting box below. I decided these were bee droppings and this proof (sort of) made me happy. Later on we saw where bees had waxed up an entrance or two for their young and this was another confirmation that the bees liked our Bee Motel situation.

A few years later some structural changes to our back yard meant moving the Bee Motel and it’s new home ended up being in an open space hanging on a fence.

For a while I checked in on any new happenings and was rewarded one day with a bee who didn’t mind the nosey human with the camera. This bee was a new one to me and I watched as it used the hole then plugged it up.

In our garden we regularly maintain a good selection of bee friendly plants (salvia, eggplant flowers, broccoli flowers which they Love, tomato flowers, potato flowers, bean flowers, pumpkin and zucchini, the list is long) and now we have a mixture of solitary and hive bees visiting our garden.

My all time favourite is the Sunflower as it tells an interesting story from beginning to end. The seed popping up and growing into a sturdy trunk with leaves that our hens just Love. Then that awesome flower head unfurling with a steady supply of pollen for the bees.

One of our neighbours now has a honeybee hive and these busy dudes have joined the party at our place. This is where I have fun with the camera as the honeybees are so fast that watching them and photographing them stretches my skill base.

Lavender flowers are also a bee favourite and, you guessed it, we have a wonderful lavender plant in the front garden.

I do hope you’ve enjoyed this wander through the garden and I’ll add to my garden stories as they show up to be told.

Thank you Bee Population, we totally appreciate everything you do for our plants.

#bees #garden #pollination #sunflower #permaculture