Welcoming and protecting wild bees

Wild bees are mostly solitary. They live for about 1 year. They are the first spring pollinators with bumblebees.

60% of wild bees nest in the ground, but the remaining 40% like to lay eggs in insect hotels.

It is therefore necessary in particular to provide holes of different diameters in the wood, as recommended by Bernard Cwiek, manufacturer of insect hotels in Belgium: “If you want to accommodate a lot of different wild bees, you have to vary the size of the holes. I advise you to make holes that go from 4 to 12 mm every 2 cm. Summer bees are very small. They don’t are not going to plug 12 mm holes because that would exhaust them.”

“In insect hotels, wild bees have to find holes in the wood, adapted to their size.”

Bernard Cwiek

at franceinfo

It is not enough to drill holes in wood, it is also necessary to choose wood which does not risk injuring the wings of the bees: “You have to use hard wood, avoid willow, birch, these are woods that work too much in winter. You should know that the wild bee stays 11 months in the hole, and that they are adults only at the end of If it rains in the box, and if there is a heat wave behind it, it risks crushing the bees.

You should also avoid soft wood and fir wood because splinters remain. It hurts their wings when they go in and out.”

Avoid using pallet wood, thin materials if you build your shelter yourself. Also flee the cheap products that are found everywhere. The wood used to make them does not hold up over time. Nests and cocoons that take on water, and it is certain death for the wild bees. In addition, your hotel, which is also undoubtedly home to lacewings, ladybugs, earwigs, and even butterflies, will quickly disintegrate.

Do not hesitate to install your wild bee shelter in a place of passage. They do not sting since they do not have a stinger.

“There’s no point putting it in the back of the garden where no one goes. The bees are not bothered by humans. It’s my fight in schools, where I make insect hotels with the children. I I am fighting to have them put in the playground, and not in the back, where the children will no longer see them.

The goal is to educate the kids. And if behind, the child comes with his dad to tell him: ‘Look at what we have built, you see, it works. We can do one at home, I’m happy.”

Wild bees do not produce honey, but they pollinate 80% of plant species worldwide.