Fall Maintenance for the Bee Hotel
Now that fall is here, it’s time for a little maintenance before the native pollinators move in for the winter
The “Hotel de Sage” Bee Hotel in mid-autumn
Bee hotels are a great way to get native pollinators to move into your garden. Give them a little shelter, a place to raise the kids, and plenty of food within flying distance and they’re bound to stick around.
A Home For the Natives
I live in coastal(ish) Southern California where a lot of the natural habitat has been paved over or replaced with non-natives making it tough for native bees and other insects to survive. I discovered bee hotels (aka: “insect hotels”) about five years ago now and decided to build one in the hopes that it would encourage the local insect to take up residence and help pollinate the many flowering natives (especially sages) here at The Acre.
Despite warnings from others that it wouldn’t work, my bee hotel has been a surprising success. Aside from beetles, spiders, and fence lizards (ok, not insects, but they like it anyway), it’s also been the nesting site for a dozen or so mason and carpenter bees each year. Both are members of the few native bee families we have here in the dry, southwestern United States. Carpenter bees are the big, shiny black bees we were all afraid of when we were kids. The Mason bees are smaller, more like a honey bee but without the yellow stripes.
Unlike the more common European honey bee, these native bees live alone and build their nests in hollowed out wood. The carpenter bees prefer a soft wood like dried agave flower stalks (of which I have plenty). Mason bees prefer hollowed out spaces, often created by beetles, in old wood such as the native coastal live oaks. My bee hotel has both types of wood as well as canes from (the invasive) Arundo cane and stalks leftover from last season’s sunflowers.
Bee Hotel Maintenance
Bee Hotel Maintenance Video
As insect habitats go, the bee hotel is pretty low maintenance, but with winter only weeks away and the bees looking for places to lay their eggs, now is a good time to make sure everything is ship shape and ready to welcome visitors. I haven’t paid much attention to the hotel since early last spring, so I want to give it a good top-to-bottom inspection and make any repairs necessary before the weather turns cold and wet.
Structure Check
My hotel is a bit of an awkward building. It’s tall and narrow with a long, corrugated steel roof to keep the rain out. To keep it standing, I have it anchored to a pole hammered a couple feet into the ground. I want to check the support legs to make sure they’re good and stable without any wobble. Additionally, I want to check the roof to make sure it hasn’t loosened over the season (I don’t want it flying off in a winter storm).
Once I’m satisfied that the basic support structure is good I check the sides, back and bottom to make sure they’re secure as well. Anything that seems loose or wobbly gets some extra screws to firm it up.
“Room” Repair & Replacement
The final part of the inspection is to check the wood logs and sticks that form the various “rooms” in the hotel.
The bee hotel has a variety of hard and soft woods as well as canes and stalks, that all appeal to different types of insects. As these dry, in some cases, disintegrate, they tend to shrink and leave large gaps that make ideal nesting spots for rodents, lizards, and even a few birds.
Since these critters often dine on bees and insects, we need to make sure crumbling wood and shrinking logs are replaced with fresh wood that fills the gaps and offers protection to our overwintering bugs.
I noticed a few gaps that could use filling, so I added a few new pieces including some oak branches, a couple of dried citrus branches, and a few large sunflower stalks from the summer. While filling in the gaps I made sure to note any nests that were already occupied (there were about 10), and worked around them so I wouldn’t disturb any slumbering bugs waiting for spring.
A Little Final Landscaping
The step in the bee hotel’s fall maintenance is to clean up the weeds and stuff around the base and make sure there’s water nearby.
A terra cotta dish converted to an insect watering hole
Weeds growing around the bottom of the bee hotel not only give cover to potential predators, but they also invite obnoxious invaders like Argentine black ants that will colonize the bee hotel and destroy everything in it. As a result, I make sure any weeds within reach of the hotel are cleared to the ground (I’m having terrible trouble with horehound this year).
That clearance also makes for extra room for the two sages, an Autumn Sage (Salvia greggii) and a Germander sage (Salvia chamaedryoides) I have flanking the hotel.
While not specifically California natives, both are native to the southwest and food sources for the native bees. More importantly, they can live in proximity to the coastal live oaks behind them, which is a plus. The oaks secrete an oil which kills most things under them, so finding plants that will not only survive but thrive and provide food is great.
Finally, while I don’t normally have any water in this particular garden, I moved a terra cotta pot base into the vicinity to use as a birdbath / insect watering hole.
In this area, by this time of the year it hasn’t rained in almost 7 months so the ground is bone dry and finding water (even morning dew) is a real struggle. Since the native bees use mud to seal up their nests (the use of mud is why mason bees are called “mason” bees), it’s helpful for them to have water nearby.
Ready for Winter
Barring any major weather disasters, I shouldn’t need to do anything more until spring. With all the maintenance complete, the bee hotel is ready for the busy season. I hope to see lots of those holes with little mud “doors” very soon!
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