Sep 16, 2023

Eco Restoration 03 : Bumblebees

Overview

Let’s have a tiny critter house party!

Kristin and I created a bunch of bumble bee and mason bee houses, plus a stack of tiny bird houses. What follows are pics leading up to that, and from the party. At the end are some resource links for things like bees, polinators, and native prarie.

Pics

Fall 2023 - Start a prairie

Earlier this Fall, Kristin started to create a Prairie in the backyard. This involved rototilling the grass that was out there, watering to get weed seeds to germinate, and then covering the backyard in plastic to kill the newly germinated weed seeds. In early October, the plan is to plant native seeds.

This tiny rototiller was not up to the task…

A quick trip to HandyAndy and we are in business.

After the soil has been tilled, we laid plastic.

Fall 2023 - Build Critter Houses

I bought a staple gun and we went to work.

The bumble bee house is the most complicated of the houses. It has a little tube entrance into a ‘mud room’. Then there is the ‘nesting room’ with a bunch of bedding material already there. Bumble bees like to nest in abandoned mice nests. Notice the nice bit of bedding…just leaves and grass I picked up off the driveway.

Fall 2023 - Critter House Painting Party

Now that we have built dozens of critter houses, we are ready to have a party and have folks come over and decorate these and then take them home. Here’s the start of the day, before folks show up.