Pink Bee-Wasp Condo at Franklin Children’s Garden, City of Toronto Parks and Recreation, on Centre Island.
Spring 2008 onward (permanent)
⁕ About the Pink Bee-Wasp Condo
⁕ Video: solitary bee and wasp nests up close, and explained
⁕ Bee/wasp nest blocks up close
⁕ Elsewhere in Bee Condos: Zurich (New Sept 25, 2009)
⁕ Solitary bee nesting strategies and life cycles
⁕ Building homes for solitary bees
⁕ In the press
About the Pink Bee-wasp Condo
Free and open to the public year round, more than 20 species of solitary native bees and wasps can be viewed emerging, nest-building, visiting flowering plants and collecting materials in the garden and surrounding park. These observation nest blocks, specially designed by independent researcher Dr. Peter Hallett (University of Toronto), can be viewed anytime via binoculars, and up close at special viewing times arranged by FCG staff, who will often be present to answer questions.
The condo is permanent, but we’re gathering data this Spring and Summer of its seasonal activity for the second part of Resonating Bodies, “Nest Wall” (2009 – 2010). “Nest Wall” will involve a mixed media work which will refer in form and content to these “trap nested” and other solitary nesting wild pollinators (bees and wasps) local to the GTA, their lifecycles, nesting materials, and their temporal relationships with flowering plants. Various species residing in Pink Condo are also featured in our trading card series (2008 and 2009).
Pink Condo inhabitants (doc)
Video: solitary bee and wasp nests up close
In this video independent researcher Dr. Peter Hallett shows and discusses the observation nest blocks with Sarah Peebles.
Bee/wasp nest blocks up close
The observation nest blocks (and their inhabitants), are donated to FCG by Dr. Peter Hallett. Special events and ongoing educational activities will take place through the FCG programmes, among others.
Some more nest blocks, photos courtesy of Dr Peter Hallet (click to enlarge), below. Many of these nests have been created with cuttings of leaves carefully constructed by leafcutter bees (Megachile), other nests were constructed by other species of solitary bees using resins (from plants chewed), mud and other materials. Some pupae are visible. When they reach maturity, they will chew their way out. Some have emerged and others may have been parasitised. If you look carefully, you can see that in some bores there are more than one species of bee and/or wasp.
Elsewhere in Bee Condos: Zurich
Bee nesting enclosures at the Botanical Institute of the University of Zurich (photos courtesy James D. Thomson)
Solitary bee nesting strategies and life cycles
Below, an illustration of the nesting strategies and life cycles of various kinds of solitary bees.
Read & view more about solitary bee lifestyles and physiology:
at the Bee Trading Card Gallery, A Guide to Toronto’s Pollinators, and resources.
Building homes for solitary bees
Easy DIY bee/wasps condos
Drawing (above) by Vera Ming Wong. Text by Sarah Peebles.
Bee/Wasps condos attract wood-nesting and pithy stem-nesting solitary bees and wasps. Easy DIY condos can include the following basic guidelines – you can make them in blocks, as free-form sculptures, or some sort of cross thereof.
1. Find or cut a piece of wood which hasn’t been chemically treated; experiment with other materials which are chemically inert, if you like (some bees also nest in the sides of brick houses and leafcutter bee nests have also been found in keylocks and field stethoscopes!).
2. Size: at least 5 inches long by 5 inches deep, though not necessarily rectangular
3. Drill into it – but not all the way through it – with a 3/8th inch wood bit and other drill bits larger and smaller (a range of sizes will attract various species of bees/wasps); leave about 1/2-inch between holes. Bees typically use holes which are only open on one end.
4. If you want to decorate their new home, you could use artist’s acrylic paint (water-based), or latex housepaint, as long as it doesn’t have anti-fungus additives. Stick to water-based glues. Those products dry quickly and are pretty innocuous chemically. Yarn, recycled cloth, felt, paper, hair, old toy parts…use your imagination!
5. Creating a roof to shield your little abode is a good idea
6. You can choose to insert straws into each hole, as parasites and fungus
commonly make problems over time (thus keep an eye on your materials for #4).
7. Either attach a hanger to the roof or the backside and suspend from your house, or, affix to a poll for inserting into the ground (minimum 2 ft up to avoid ants, etc; max probably no more than 8 ft heigh to avoid strong winds), or, place on a table outside. Greasing the pole or table legs will help keep ants and spiders out. Projects on Vacouver Island display smaller condos, though these are not free-form: www.lifecyclesproject.ca/resources/bee_average/about.php
For more complicated condos which allow you to observe the developing and emerging bees/wasps, see plans by Peter Hallett on this site. His housing is made of blocks with pre-cut grooves which also require a housing to be constructed for them.
Note: unlike social bees and wasps which have stores of tasty resources and young to defend, solitary bees and wasps do not, and so don’t bother to sting unless stepped on or squished (you can watch them from a close distance, they really don’t care). Wearing a long-sleeved shirt and pants and a hat, though, is a good idea to avoid accidentally trapping them in your clothes or hair.
Dr. Hallet says: Caution! Please do not move your bees and wasps to new localities, or sell or give away dirty equipment (i.e., used equipment which may have been infested by parasites). The big idea is for people to grow and nurture their *local* beneficial insects. Long distance commerce and problems with hygiene are blamed for many problems (of honey bees, and in some regions of commercial bumble bees, for example), and this concern extends to wild bumble bee populations (in the U.S.A. and Canada, including Ontario) as well as to solitary bees.
These concerns must also extend to solitary bees if we are to maintain a healthy local ecosystem.
Have fun!
DIY Condo Instruction (PDF of instructions, above)
Information for those wishing to build homes for bees and wasps
by Peter E. Hallett (all pdfs)
Method For Hiving Solitary Bees and Wasps
Additional articles by author:
Three Factors Affecting Annual Yields of Solitary Bees and Wasps
“Do-it-yourself” Field Trials on Factors Affecting the Annual Yields of Solitary Bees and Wasps
In the press
