I'm made from wood sourced from trees that required felling along our canals. I'm a home for solitary bees with my wings made from recycled plastic. I've been installed in our Great Community Orchard which has been lovingly created by our Wild in Birmingham volunteers, outside of Arena Birmingham in the city centre.
Bee facts
Did you know there are over 270 different kinds of bees in Britain? I am here because of all the great work the volunteers of the Wild in Birmingham project do each week, caring for our urban environment and improving it so us bees can move into even the most urban of places.
The other bees that have moved in are honey bees, carder bumble bees and buff tailed bumble bees. If you keep a look out in the spring, you might see the hairy footed flower bees feeding on the tubular nectar rich spring flowers, especially the lungwort and wall flowers.
Keep a look out in the summer for mason bees with their orange haired abdomens, and the larger leafcutter bees with their rolled-up leaves carried underneath them.
Our hotel
Once the hotel gets really busy, you might even see a sharp-tail bee resting near the hotel, they are cleptoparasites which means they wait for the leafcutter bees to make nests and then lay their own eggs into their nests and their grub eats the host bee egg or larvae!
The wool carder bee nests in tree stumps, and lines their nest with the silver hairs from plants leaves such as Mullein and lambs-ears. You might see one feeding on the flowers of lambs-ears, betony and woundwort during the summer months.
Us bees require habitats to survive, we need a home in the soil, in a tree or a wall, or even an old mouse hole to nest and rest, and plenty of wildflowers of all different colours and shapes, with as long a flowering period as possible.
