How bee boxes work

Bee boxes provide habitat

Unlike honeybees, solitary bees do not "live" in their homes. Male solitary bees do not build any nests and instead, sleep in flowers or or on plants. Female solitary bees spend a lot of their day in their nests, dividing their time between gathering resources, constructing and stocking their brood cells in their homes, and sheltering overnight. Solitary bees only live about 3-8 weeks, which means they have to very efficiently gather food, make homes, and reproduce.

What happens in a bee tube?

A female bee closes off the end of a tube with mud, packs in a golden mound of pollen and nectar, and then lays an egg. She adds a thin layer of mud to close off the cell, and repeats the process for each "room' she creates. The egg hatches into larva, which eats the readymade food source. When it's ready, it forms a pupa. Inside, the larva metamorphoses into a mature bee and emerges when spring temperatures reach about 55 degrees. (Source)

Image credit: https://kidsgardening.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Pollinator-Pal-Mason-Bee-2.pdf 

Building Bee Hotels

My project involved both building bee hotels, and teaching children how to build them while also imparting lessons on the importance of bees, how to differentiate them from wasps and other aggressive insects, and how to protect them. 

For the bee hotels that I built, I used found materials to build large boxes: 

• reclaimed fence boards

• used lumber

• bamboo harvested from people's yards (thank you Joan Law!)

• food cans pulled from the waste stream (thank you Recology and Craig Johnson!)

• donated paper straws (thank you Davis troop leaders!)

• donated mason bee tubes (thank you Aunt Jen!)

Once my boxes were built, I cut bamboo to width using a radial arm saw with a jig set up to cut them to the same length - I cut bamboo for hours! I also added 4x4 pieces with holes drilled into them, and used pine cones in some spots as additional habitat. It is best not to glue tubes in, as the best cleaning method is to pull tubes out and soak briefly with 20% alcohol to kill mites or other parasites that could infect bees. We don't want to propagate illnesses and make bees sick!

For my children's workshops, I gave out and explained two handouts: 

• "Who Brings The Sting?", a handout created by Bees In The D, Detroit MI - many children appraoched workshops with concerns about bees, and so I shared this handout in order to equip children with the ability to differentiate between bees, wasps, hornets, etc. I described how to identify bees correctly, the behavior you can expect from honeybees and solitary bees, and how to stay safe and protect them.

• Beds for Bees: A coloring sheet I created to help children settle into the activity while I explained about the project, which includes:

  • a graphic illustration of pollination to color

  • a cross-section of a bee tube (as above)

  • instructions on making a bee box out of found materials (food can, bamboo, paper straws)

  • instructions on picking a spot to place a bee box

  • instructions on care and maintenance of bee boxes

  • a spot for kids to write their name and their box number: this was for children who opted to give me their bee boxes to put in nature preserves, so that they could take home their box number, and using the QR code, come to this website to later find out which nature preserve their box was placed in, so that they could visit it with their family

For these workshops, I brought materials for building bee hotels:

• clean 32-oz cans: I washed and dried 200 former tomato cans - I also installed a little "overhangs" on each of them, using aluminum roof flashing cut into strips and riveted in place

• tube materials cut to the depth of the cans (bamboo, paper straws, mason bee tubes)

Children then picked their materials from my box and put bee tubes in, until they were full. If bee tubes were still falling out, they used smaller tubes or wedge materials (like wood skewers) to make them tight.

If children opted to take their bee boxes home, their instruction sheet showed them how to place it and take care of it.

If children decided to donate their box to my project, they wrote down their box number on their sheet and had the link to later check where their box was placed, for them to visit.

To pilot my kids'workshops, I started with Daisy and Brownie troops, and I found this small environment really great for getting into the details of bees and how they live, as well as building bee boxes. I visited four troops, and we built 42 bee boxes - if Girl Scouts had time, they could make one to keep and a second one to donate to my project. 

Then, I received approval from our Program Coordinator for Commissions and Committees, Parks and Community Services, Urban Forestry with the City of Davis, Conor Shuey, to bring my workshop activity to the City's Children's Summer Activity Fair, a large event for families learning about summer activities for kids. I had about 50 kids come through and build bee boxes, and all of them decided to take theirs home with them.