Yumaro Living now has their own Bee Hotels. These Hotels will attract local, native bees and are a great way to keep the bees safe and warm and out of the weather. A Bee Hotel is a structure you can build in your garden, with the idea that it gives native solitary bees a place to rest and breed. Solitary bees live all alone in individual nests in small hollowed out trees. They do not produce honey but are great pollinators and fascinating to watch.
The Bee Hotel provides shelter from extreme weather and serves as a safe place for bees to hatch their young. All the residents at Yumaro Living are extremely excited at the prospect of watching the bees come and go as they please and eventually lay eggs and watch them hatch.
Bee populations in Australia are declining due to the shortage of native plants particularly around residential areas. To attract the bees, native plants such as bottle brush, daisies, butterfly bush, lavender, rosemary and even tea tree need to be planted close to the Bee Hotel. This will make sure the hotel will lure the bees and then they will use your garden as their own personal ‘restaurant’ thus carrying on the important task of pollinating both your wildflowers and even your vegie garden.
The residents at Yumaro Living are the wonderful people behind this fantastic creation. Firstly, they made wooden boxes before filling them with a range of materials including fennel stems, bamboo hollows, wood with holes and even straws – Anything with holes to make it feel more like a home. They had to make sure that everything was packed tightly and firm to attract the bees so bees would love their new Hotel. The Bee Hotel needs to make sure that it is always kept warm plus sheltered from the rain.
Two of our residents, Mieke and David, have finished painting their own Bee Hotels with Non Toxic paint. Joey and Matt, Yumaro Living’s support workers, are helping to fill them with little rooms for the bees. David has put his on the veranda at the back of his unit and they have also placed one on the garden behind the pizza oven.
This is a fascinating construction for everyone, no matter what their age, to watch native bees bring pollen, nectar and building materials back to the Bee Hotel. It is a wonderful way to teach kids about the variety of nature and the behaviour of insects.
Our residents are currently making Bee Hotels for Yumaro Living and once they have made enough for themselves, we will look at taking orders for anyone who would like to purchase one for their own garden. We can also sell you native plants from our nursery in Ulladulla if you need the types of flowers that will attract solitary bees and we will give you all the information you will need to make sure your Bee Hotel will be up and running.
If this interests you or if you know someone who may be interested, you can follow Yumaro on Facebook for more information on prices and availability (search “Yumaro Facebook”) or you can email Kylie to BEE added to our list (kylie@yumaro.com.au).
