From signage to Air Bee-N-Bee

(Published) 08.03.2022
(Author) Shaima Moon

Did you know that 80% of our food crops are pollinated by bees? That’s one in three bites of the food you’re eating.

Extinction of the bees would make a huge impact on the balance of the Earth’s ecosystem and affect global food supplies. So as much as we need the bees, they need our help more than ever right now. That’s why we’ve built our own Air bee-N-bee. Let us walk you through the proces.

In front of our studio is a beautiful tree. Unfortunately this tree is mostly used as a place for people to drop their trash bags, whilst we believe that the tree’s drip line can be used perfectly as a bee friendly city garden.

Did you know that there’s actually a steady urban bee population in the Netherlands right now thanks to bee hotels, bee stops and honey highways?

So we started taking next steps in realising our own bee hub.
Up until now we’ve had a name sign hanging above our door made out of recycled materials from old printers. We have replaced this with our home-made bee hotel painted in a bright violet color, because this attracts bees, aka form follows impact! And to make this hotel all-inclusive we’ve planted floral resources from the top 10 bee’s favourite plants in the tree’s drip line.

This is not only an initiative for the bees, but also for our neighbourhood.
Everyone has been really pleased to see how we cleaned up our part of the street. We have to continue the great work and we want you to join us!

(1) Get rest wood from your local hardware store
Preferably untreated in any way. You can drill holes (with a diameter of 2 to 9 mm) inside a block of wood or create a shape that you can fill with bamboo stems. The insects will lay their eggs inside.

(2) Sand, sand, sand
This is not only important if you want to paint your hotel a color, but it’s even more important that the entrances are sanded and soft. If they have rough edges, the insects can get hurt.

(3) Get your design ready
The fun part about DIY is that you can personalise your design. If you want to paint your design, make sure you pick one of your guests favourite colours. Bees are mostly attracted to blue/violet, mauve/pink, white and yellow flower colours.

(4) Work out your design
Since we’re replacing our signboard, we’ve put our studio name on each side of the hotel! We went with a light violet and bamboo stems.

(5) Don’t paint the holes/bamboo stems
Make sure your bee-N-bee is completely dry before you start to fill it with the nesting materials. We don’t want to harm the bees with chemicals!

(6) Placement
It is important to place your hotel in a warm, sunny and sheltered spot at least 1.5 to 2 meters off the ground. Make sure it’s secure and not swinging in the wind and in a place as much out of the rain as possible.

(7) Plants
If you want your hotel to be a great succes, it’s important to make it an all-inclusive one. You need to plant enough floral resources for the bees. We’ve planted from the top 10 bee friendly plants.

We hope you are inspired by and support our initiative to give the bees housing, nectar and pollen! We kindly request visitors of our flower garden to place trash bins in front of our studio at the marked spot, instead of around the tree.

Love,
u-inc