Here you will learn everything that makes up the perfect bee hotel and how you can give bees a home in your bee-friendly garden.
Give bees a home:
You don't have to set up an entire hive and become a hobby beekeeper to give bees a home. Here, too, there is: even small deeds have a great effect.
If you have space in your garden, leave bees a stack of rock or deadwood. Other nesting possibilities are unplanted sand areas, hollow plant stems or wooden blocks with boreholes. It is particularly important not to completely "cleanse" the garden before winter, but to leave flowering plants standing. There, wild bees and other insects can hibernate.
A simple way to give bees a home is to set up a bee hotel. These offer wild bees an artificial nesting place. In the specialist trade or at nature conservation associations you will find bee-friendly accommodation for garden and balcony.
If you want to build a bee hotel yourself, make sure that you do not use soft wood or fir wood. In such woods, moisture passes through cracks and subsequently fungal growth then threatens the brood. Only hardwoods are suitable for the construction of a bee hotel.
When purchasing a nesting aid, it is important to ensure that the following nesting materials have NOT been used:
- Pine cones
- Straw
- Wooden blocks of soft wood with unclean, frayed boreholes (this can hurt the brood)
- branches drilled in brainwood
- Hole bricks
- bamboo tubes from which the marrow has not been drilled out or
- Bamboo tubes with crushed and splintered stalk edges
- Cardboard nesting tubes, as they are quickly infested by parasites.
A wide selection of bee hotels can be found here: naturschutzcenter.de
Natural corners for wild bees:
A natural garden not only looks beautiful and is also varied for the human eye. It also offers bees and other insects natural nesting aids and food sources that are welcome. In a garden with natural corners, biodiversity will automatically increase.
Grow in a corner of your garden, which grows or plant a flower meadow that only needs to be mowed 2 times a year. The bees will thank you and for you this corner means less gardening!
Also a pile of stones or wood, an unplastered wall or simply areas that are only minimally worked or managed by you are ideal for bees, bumblebees and co. There they are not disturbed and find peace. They remember this and will gladly return to these places to lay their nests .B (earth bumblebee).
Prefer hedges instead of fences as visual protection and property demarcation. Prefer native species when planting. A native shrub hedge with cornel cherry, rock pear, willow or rotten tree is ideal. The popular cherry laurel is evergreen, but not particularly valuable ecologically.
A stack on reclaimed wood is extremely helpful. At one point you can leave the wood to yourself. Nature finds its way and a pile of reclaimed wood also looks beautiful.
If you have fruit trees in the garden or plan to plant, make use of old native and high-stemmed varieties. In this way, you not only provide bees with a food source, but also ensure that the variety of fruit is preserved. Did you know that the pollination performance of wild bees significantly exceeds that of honeybees? So if you are promoting wild bees elsewhere in your own garden, you can look forward to a rich harvest of apples, pears, cherries or other fruit. Help nature, so nature helps you.
Here you will find many more tips on how to become a bee protector.
