build a bumblebee box or a bee and bug hut

This is not on the top of my priorities anymore. And I don’t want to keep it making me feel lazy and a bad environmentalist anymore.

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
- Muriel Rukeyser

Moving from Florida to North Carolina we discovered an amazing insect. At the time, we had no idea what it was: large, black and yellow, three times the size of a bumble bee, hovering, and not easily shooed away from public vicinity. A young playmate from church taught my son how to gently capture and handle these monster bees without being hurt. As a family joke, we named the bee, “Bob”. He was our sons first live catch and release prize.

For this original and particular bee friend, we soon realized that the reason he was hanging around was because he liked our cabin-style house. Actually, he liked it so much he decided to chew a hole through the side of the deck rail on our upper level sun porch and to move right in; at this point in time, we became obviously concerned and after a bit of local mountain inquiry determined we “had ourselves a carpenter bee”.

Being emotionally attached to having our pet friend Bob around when we were on the porch sunning or dining al fresco, we opted to do the only logical thing a good carpenter bee tender could do: we plugged up the hole and proceeded to place softer wood samples around the deck until our happy little houseguest found himself a more comfortable and less destructive way to call our deck his family home.

“Home”, according to poet Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they let you in.” Year after year, a new Bob arrived to make himself at home at our humble abode, followed in secondary and tertiary years by the future bee couples “Dick and Jane” and “Ralph and Alice”. This process we welcomed and allowed. Once “Spots”, “Wally” and “the Beaver” came around, too, we had to be more aggressive about protecting our property, though. After all, what is man if not king and keeper of his own castle?

[Carpenter bees have powerful jaws and tunnel their way through hard wood. You can see evidence of perfectly round holes (which they will occasionally emerge from), but you will also be able to observe their handiwork while they chew. If you see one of these little round holes followed by a plethora of what looks like sawdust or wood shavings emerging then you know a carpenter bee has chosen to eat your house in order to call it his, and that your resident houseguest is probably still at home.]

Carpenter bees, though entertaining, are not allies of human property. Plug their drill holes, shoo them away, and reclaim what wooden areas you would like to call your own: protect yourself. Just make sure to encourage the wee ones to be gentle and kind, have some fun, and by all means—remember to say hello each summer to Bob for us if he visits you. Life with these little creatures created some of our more special lifetime memories, and I wish the same silly joys in every day for all the goodwill members here on 43.

With a friendly smile, I’ll say, “That’s the buzz”.

TTFN

No box. But I wanted to save a small bumblebee today, which was sitting on the ground. First, it crawled onto my finger tip, then it STUNG me!!! ^{Grumble…ungrateful…} Poor me, and poor bumblebee. It was probably dying already.

After my bf and I were checking out some bits of wood in our house to see if we can turn them into a solitary bee hotel, I was looking up stuff (ideal length and depth of the holes) on the internet, when my bf pointed out the chain saw noise outside.
So I jumped out of the window (ground floor, a garden door is another project!) and asked the workers if I could have a piece of the wood they sawed. They gave me two logs of 40 cm length with a diameter of about 25cm! That’s perfect, all I need to do it figure out how to mount them high (they are very heavy) and drill holes into them. Yeah!

not because of the building part, but as usual, I find too many things in my way, like: Having the space for a real box in my garden (it’s too small for an overground box), buying the material, transporting it home (I don’t have a car, so everything is being brought home on a bicycle), and finding the enthousiasm to do wood work inside my house (thus getting the place all messy), as the weather sucks at the moment. My BF and I cycled to the garden center today, but only came home with two bags of horse manure to throw on the flower beds. We spent the amazing total of two Euro on them, which is good, seeing that I have three (!) money related goals…
I also saw tons of great bird nesting boxes, but again, the friggin wood pigeons are already nesting in the one tree in our tiny garden, so we already get enough poo on our flowers underneath, which kills them off. And here I am, ranting again…

Gotta give credit: The picture is © Dave Pehling
http://crawford.tardigrade.net/bugs/BugofMonth36.html
He has some good ideas on how to make your own nesting helps for bees. They can easily be DIYed, and also will cost you only pennies:

This is for solitary bees.
Info and pic taken from the following German website:
http://www.bienenhotel.de/html/lehmwand.html

All you need to do is connect the wooden pieces including a bottom or back side, fill it with wet dirt and let it dry. The bees and other creepy-crawleys will drill their own holes.

The plan is to build something like this

I still haven’t found a store that sells the bamboo sticks in the size I need. The bumblebee season is nearly over anyway by now. Nice winter project. Oh, well.

Shame I haven’t found any bamboo canes with a thick enough diameter to use in any hardware/gardening store or center we have been in lately. Gotta do this this week!