Bee Garden

Bee Hotel Garden is a Beautiful Insectary

Our bee hotel garden is a beautiful insectary for native nesting bees. In California, we have over 1600 varieties of native nesting bees! These are the tiny bees you see darting around your gardens, pollinating flowers and vegetables.

They do not make honey. They do not have a queen or a hive. Young children are incredulous when they hear this! Their only job is to pollinate 70% of the food we grow here in California.

These bees usually nest in the ground, or in downed wood. We clean up much of that old wood, and have created this habitat for them here. The bee blocks and logs have holes of various sizes, for the many different sized bees.

The bees lay eggs in the holes in sequential sacs, and when the baby bees are thru their larval stages and emerge, we hope to have nectaring flowers ready for them. There are specific bee-friendly flowers for these California natives, read the article below if you would like to support these little critters!
 
Because California native bees hatch year round, we keep things in bloom in the garden surrounding and to the left of the side bee hotel for them, about 500 square feet of bee-friendly flowers. Our bee hotel is inspired by a similar structure in a garden in Paris, and was built by the Oakland city carpentry shop.
 
You, the home gardener, can support and rejuvenate the bee populations in your neighborhood. Dr Gordon Frankie of the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying bee habitats, and his recommendations are:
 
  • Eliminate the use of pesticides
  • Plant a diversity of nectar- and pollen-rich plants (10 or more species)
  • Mass each plant in patches 1 square meter or larger
  • Choose plants that bloom in succession over the seasons
  • Avoid excessive manicuring
  • Set aside some bare patches of soil for nesting
 
For more information on supporting these threatened bees, read on: https://www.cnps.org/gardening/bee-friendly-gardening-2892

 

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