Home Sweet Hive…Or Stump…Or Ground
Just as there are different types of bees, there are different types of bee homes.
- Some bees are social and live with other bees.
- Some are solitary, living their lives alone.
- Some live in hives.
- Some live in nests.
All bees make homes that make sense for them.
You will now check your understanding of bees and different types of homes by placing them in their correct home column. Click "Arrange It!" below to begin the activity.
Even though bees look and live differently, they are all built for one thing: gathering pollen.
WATCH THIS!
Do you want to build a bee hotel in your garden? Learn more about bee habitats, creating bee hotels and other homes in a variety of environments. Judy Wu-Smart from University of Nebraska's Bee Lab explains more in this video.
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JUDY WU-SMART: So we're in an urban setting, and in such an area
where there's a lot of high traffic and very little area
to create habitat, I'm just showing you some habitat here,
some nesting habitat for some of our wild bees.
It doesn't take a lot of space.
We just have a simple structure and we supplied it with
these bamboo sticks. You can also use blocks or
logs to drill holes. And you want to drill about 4-6"
in length so that there's enough room for those bees to
make their nest.
So this structure right here is considered similar to
what we would think of as an apartment complex.
Each of these reeds would be an individual apartment
with an individual bee.
So they're not going in and out of other people's reeds, but
each one is occupied by a single mother who's
creating brood throughout the season, and that brood
will develop over the winter and then in the spring
they'll come out and then start mating and then
reoccupy a new nest or a new reed and so sometimes it does take
a little bit of time for bees to find the nest.
And you can have your kids and other friends take some time
and decorate those homes. The coloration will
help the bees identify where their home is;
They'll be able to find them, occupy and establish,
and then their offspring will continue to establish
year after year.
So you notice that some of these stems have different sizes,
the diameter is different sizes. We also have different sizes
of holes that we drill into the blocks, and that
actually encourages and attracts
different species of bees. You can tell when you have a
nice diversity of bees occupying your nest by the
different materials that they're capping the reeds with.
So you can see some of them are using flower petals
and leaves - these are most likely your leaf-cutting bees.
Some of them are occupied with or filled with mud.
Those are likely your mason bees.
Some of them are filled with a resin or cellophane-like
material - those are your cellophane-resin bees.
It is nice after a few years to replace the blocks and
to replace the stems regularly or clean them out
with a little pipe cleaner and a little soapy water.
This could be something you do with your kids,
your grandkids...This is a great project for anybody
of any ages. It creates a nice opportunity for the family
to create something that is productive and beneficial to
the ecosystem.
