Happy Friday to our fellow teams!
Yesterday, our team met with John Rost down at the greenhouse to discuss the scope of our EACAP project. This semester, we’ll be building solitary bee nests, to be hung outside in our area. The nests are composed of a collection of hollow bamboo shoots, cut down to size. By bunching them together into a hangable shape, each bamboo shoot becomes the perfect size for a single bee to enter, lay its eggs, and leave. According to Mr. Rost, the eggs are packed in with leaves, and when they hatch, the young bees push the leaves out and leave, leaving each hole ready for a new bee to enter and nest in.
The bamboo patch out behind the sheep barn here at PSU Berks – taken by Jamie Ernesto
So, to start out, we’ll be harvesting bamboo and cutting it down to size from the bamboo patch and leaving it to dry. Bamboo shrinks when it dries, so ideally we want our bamboo to dry as much as possible before we make any nests. Below is an example of the sort of habitat we’ll be making.
If the bamboo dries out completely before we construct the habitat, then we can bundle the cut shoots together with little worry for them shrinking further and moving about. We can then design and start collecting materials for building our habitats. We’re looking forward to being able to work with Mr. Rost more throughout the semester, and we’re really excited to learn more from him.
One fact he mentioned that I specifically found intriguing concerned the European honey bee. Apparently the bee was never in the United States until European settlers arrived. There are plenty of species of pollinator bees native to America, but the European honey bee out-competes them. Additionally, when we changed our farming style to accommodate more open fields, it unintentionally eliminated bunches of wood and brush between fields that native species of bees needed for habitat. If you’re interested in reading more on this, the article here is a very good read on the subject.
Until next time, we are the BEES! Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!
This is awesome! Thanks for the pictures!