apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Beautiful design and obviously functional too. Unfortunately those bees aren't native to Australia :) we do have our own native bees but I don't think they are very common compared to the introduced European bees, which do sting.

I notice the bees are not included! Wonder how long it takes for them to show up? The unit is only supposed to last a couple of years according to the link.

Wasn't this on AT SF awhile back?

I recently tried to save a bee nest at work but the bee keepers association told me that because the hive was inside the wall they wouldn't be able to transport the nest and recommended extermination.

This synthetic hive seems like it would be a wonderful shelter for bees. My only concern is does it ONLY attract non-stinging Mason bees? What's to stop killer-african bees from moving in?

I study bees for my graduate school research, and this type of nest, with lots of individual tubes will ONLY attract non-stinging bees because the way they nest is very different than stinging honeybees. These bees are called solitary bees, and there are LOTS of different kinds. Honeybee workers sting to protect the queen and their large stores of honey. Solitary bees work on their own and don't have large food stores to defend and therefore won't risk themselves by attacking an intruder.

The way they nest is actually very sweet. One solitary bee female will carefully build a series of chambers in one tube. Each chamber gets one egg and a ball of pollen that the mother bee collects. She builds walls between the chambers with leaves, flower petals, or mud. When the eggs hatch, the baby bees eat the pollen and emerge as adults the following spring.

Even though lots of bee females will build nests near each other, they are still considered solitary because they work on their own.