Bee House - Hibiscus

This bee house will help attract and keep these necessary pollinators happy and healthy. A 6" x 6" box mounted on a 14" by 8.75" board. Attract native bees to your garden and help create much needed pollinator habitat for our native bee species with a hand-painted bee house, created by GMCG’s AmeriCorps members, interns and staff. Bee houses (also called bee hotels or pollinator houses) provide artificial nesting spaces for solitary native bees like mason bees, sweat bees and leafcutter bees. About 90% of native bee species are solitary, and these houses provide the small cavities females need to raise their young. Natural nesting is the best way to support native bees, but if done right, artificial nesting can provide a boost to wild bees and be a fun, educational, and engaging activity. Bee house tips: Nesting Tubes: The house should contain hollow reeds (Reeds are not included, but are easy to collect. Mint, bee balm, echinacea, day lily, cattail reeds are what we use at GMCG, with good success!) Location: Hang the house 3 to 5 feet off the ground on a stable structure like a wall, post or fence facing south or southeast to catch morning sun. It should not swing in the wind. Food Source: Place the house near a garden with a variety of native, bee-friendly flowers and a source of mud or water. FMI on what to plant, visit: https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/pollinator-garden-cards_northeast-region-v2.pdf Cleaning: Unmaintained houses can trap parasites and fungi. Replace reeds annually. For more information about Bee Houses: https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/Bee-Houses-2-pager.pdf This beautifully illustrated essay collection offers a curious and creative invitation into the world of trees and the words we use to understand them. What is crown shyness, and how could a tree be shy? What is heartwood, and what does it have to do with the heart? So often even our scientific terms are rife with surprising etymologies and images that may reveal as much about us humans and our relationship to nature as they do about the things they describe. Words related to trees and forests are no exception. With a poet’s sensibility, Hannah Fries peels back the layers of these ecological terms, reflecting on their meaning both literally and figuratively, intertwining science and metaphor.