The first solitary bee hotels – made at last week’s community workshop – are put in place in De Beauvoir Square.
Brian at Urban Bees and Craig, the Hackney gardener who maintains De Beauvoir, are putting up a couple of the bee hotels on the south facing wall of the building in the square. It’s a nice sheltered sunny spot.
Craig is proudly showing off the new hotels he made with bamboo from local gardens and the wooden organ pipes kindly donated from De Beauvoir church.
Now we just have to wait for some warmer weather to see if the solitary bees, mainly Red Mason bees,
We installed a bee hotel last year for the first time, using a box from M&S and were delighted with the interest in it by red mason bees (to the best of my knowledge) who filled up most of the tubes in the hotel.
What’s surprising us even more is the level of activity on the bee hotel in recent weeks, especially when there is some warm sunshine. The bees are buzzing around – maybe a dozen or more at any time entering and coming out of the tubes which are now mostly free of the clay that had sealed the tubes. We don’t quite understand what they are doing now , and thought you might be able to help?