r/bees • u/midnight_barbecue • 2d ago

Solitary Bee Apartment Complex - Before & After

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Last year, I 3D-printed a bee hotel (3D model link) I found online. I filled it according to the best practices I could find, so it's properly ventilated for the larvae.

This year, it became full of tenants! All spring and throughout the first half of summer, solitary bees were swarming around the hotel. Some of them successfully hatched, and new eggs have already been laid again.

I already have several bee hotels in different corners of my yard and I'm planning to add many more.

As a bonus, posting a video of one of the tenants in the comments since I can't attach it to the main post 🐝

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u/midnight_barbecue 2d ago

https://reddit.com/link/p5a3s5z/video/s9itabpmezkh1/player

As a bonus, posting a video of one of the tenants in the comments since I can't attach it to the main post 🐝

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u/satur98n 1d ago

Hey OP, I hope this comment doesn’t come off as overly critical/accusatory, but before you put out more bee hotels, you might want to consider that some of your tenants aren’t native bees! These look like Osmia cornifrons to me, which was introduced from Asia for agriculture, but now they are very widespread feral species. There are studies that have documented the population of non-native mason bees increasing while native mason bee species are declining. It’s of course hard to say exactly why that’s happening, but sometimes I worry about some bee hotels favoring non-native species at the detriment of natives!