Bee Hotel

It has been another long day, and so it's time for a random photo from the past. This is a bee hotel I saw at the Montreal Botanical Garden in September 2017:


What I liked about this structure was its variety of hole types and sizes, but even more so, the fact that it's not so perfectly made. That indicates to me that the garden's keepers replace this wood every few years, which is important for the health of the bees because they can be sickened if you reuse the same wood for years.

When I see perfect-looking bee hotels, I wonder how long their owners intend to keep them and whether they will do more harm than good in the long run. Just leaving dead-falls and the hollow stems of your perennials in the garden over the winter is really all that's needed. The desire for ultra-neat gardens is part of the problem of habitat loss.