BATAVIA, Ohio — The Clermont County Park District has installed a new “bee hotel” at Pattison Park Lakeside, giving native solitary bees a place to nest as part of the district’s ongoing conservation efforts.
The wooden structure, built by a park district volunteer, stands near the zen garden at Lakeside, a 45-acre park on U.S. 50 just west of Owensville that was donated to the county by Aletheia Pattison. It is filled with hollow tubes designed to mimic the natural nesting cavities that solitary bees rely on, according to the park district.
Unlike honeybees, which live in large hives, most of North America’s native bee species are solitary — each female builds and provisions her own nest without help from other bees, the park district said in a social media post. More than 90% of the roughly 3,600 bee species native to North America live this way, according to the Xerces Society, a nonprofit invertebrate conservation group, and about 30% of those species nest in cavities such as hollow plant stems or holes in dead wood rather than underground.
Because solitary bees aren’t defending a shared colony, they rarely sting, and they play a significant role in pollinating wildflowers, trees, garden plants and food crops, the park district said. As natural cavities have become scarcer in developed and heavily managed landscapes, structures like bee hotels have become a common tool for giving cavity-nesting bees a place to lay their eggs, according to the Xerces Society.
Inside each tube of a bee hotel, a female bee lays an egg and leaves a supply of pollen for the larva before sealing the entrance until the young bee is ready to emerge.
The park district said the new bee hotel is one small step toward supporting native pollinators in the county, and it is encouraging visitors to stop by the zen garden at Pattison Park Lakeside to see it. Pattison Park Lakeside also features a paved trail around its pond, an accessible fishing deck, a playground and picnic shelter, and hosts the district’s seasonal maple syrup demonstrations at its Sugar Shack.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Clermont County Park District.