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This is the first chapter in the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel. It covers the benefits of bees, pollination in cities and towns, and how bee hotels can support native bees.
This chapter of, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, describes building materials and features of different bee hotels. It covers tunnel size, shelter, shade, orientation, navigation, and other features.
It can be a challenge to manage a perennial garden to look tidy and maximize benefit to wildlife. To benefit native, solitary bees, we recommend trimming perennial stems in their first winter to a create a 12"-24" stubble. Bees occupy these cut stems as nesting space over the following year. Recommendations are based on participatory research conducted with Extension agents and Extension Master Gardener℠ volunteers in North Carolina.
Identifying bees on the wing is known to be tricky. The Bees of North Carolina: An Identification Guide is a beginner’s resource designed to help quickly and generally identify native bees in North Carolina. Developed by experts at NC State Extension, it provides an overview of some of the most common groups of bees in the state. The guide will help users learn to recognize bees according to key characteristics and, eventually, according to their overall appearance.
This collection describes how to design and build a bee hotel to support native pollinator species.
This Entomology Insect Note describes the biology and control of the cicada killer wasp, a beneficial insect that can also be a pest of lawns and turfgrass.
Appendix 4 in the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, provides detailed building plans for constructing a simple bee shelter.
Appendix 3 of the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, provides a list of plants that create hollow or pithy twigs and stems that can be used as a source of nest materials for bee hotels.
This appendix to the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, summarizes the best practices suggested throughout the document.
The second chapter in the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, highlights some of the common occupants of bee hotels in North Carolina and their nesting requirements. It also details the seasons when adults are most often active (foraging and building nests) and describes body sizes and tunnel diameters.
This chapter in the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, responds to critiques of bee hotels and their impact on bee populations.
Appendix 5 of, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, provides a list of additional resources about bees, wasps, and pollinator gardening.
A foundation of IPM in urban landscapes is to put the right plant in the right place. This reduces plant stress and thus the long term costs of pest management. Impervious surface cover is linked to red maple condition and scale insect infestations. This publication describes impervious surface thresholds to use when selecting sites for planting red maples in urban landscapes.
Abstract 2 of the collection, How to Manage a Successful Bee Hotel, lists plants that may be used in nesting materials for bees.
Impervious surface cover increases tree stress and reduces tree condition. We developed an impervious surface threshold to help tree care professionals select planting sites where red maples will thrive. In this publication we describe how to estimate impervious surface cover, on site, with the Pace to Plant technique.
