bee hotels
Enhancing green spaces in London where all natural pollinators can thrive, and their habitats can be enjoyed by all.
One of the main causes of pollinator decline is the loss of natural habitats, including nesting resources. Bee hotels help support cavity-nesting solitary bees.
About PLT
Pollinating London Together (PLT) is an initiative that is raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity and pollinators and their substantial recent decline. The initiative began as a collaboration between the City of London’s livery companies, first initiated in 2020 by the Worshipful Companies of Wax Chandlers and Gardeners. With a vibrant membership across the livery company community, PLT membership has expanded to include other organisation types, including corporations. The Chelsea Physic Garden was PLT’s first non-livery company member.
Since 2022 PLT has been supported by a Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Fund (CILNF) grantby the City of London Corporation to help create biodiversity corridors across the City of London, providing pollinators with connected green spaces routes across Greater London.
To deliver its objectives, PLT has partnered with the University of Reading, including its Institute of Education. PLT’s activities related to the creation of biodiversity corridors include:
- Creating new pollinator and pollinator-habitat survey material
- Assessing the pollinator and pollinator-friendly floral diversity of the City of London
- Mapping the City using GIS and the GIGL system, and including layers that indicate pollinator presence and quality sites
- Identifying corridors along which pollinators can travel and find food and nest sites
What We Do
PLT’s mission is to create spaces in central London where all the natural pollinators can thrive, and their habitats can be enjoyed with everyone, starting in the City of London. The vision is to create a template for change and action through leadership that can be implemented in urban environments across the UK.
PLT’s public outreach activities include:
- Conducting green space planting and pollinator habitat reviews,
- Providing information on planting for pollinators,
- Delivering education and awareness raising campaigns (to schools and through public engagement events, such as art exhibitions), and
- Promoting citizen science data collection
Why are Bee Hotels important?
Pollinators are in crisis. We have lost a significant amount of natural habitat, including nesting resources, due to changes in land use, urban development, and intensive farming practices.
Bee hotels can help increase the availability of nesting resources for solitary bees. In the UK there are seven groups of cavity-nesting solitary bees: Osmia, Megachile, Heriades, Anthidium, Hoplitis, Chelostoma, and Hylaeus.
Common solitary bees associated with gardens and bee hotels:
- Red mason bee (Osmia bicornis)
- Orange-vented mason bee (Osmia leaiana)
- Blue mason bee (Osmia caerulescens)
- Willughby’s leafcutter bee (Megachile willughbiella)
- Patchwork leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis)
Other solitary bees that might use bee hotels for nesting:
- Large-headed resin bee (Heriades truncorum)
- White-jawed yellow-face bee (Hylaeus confusus)
- Common yellow-face bee (Hylaeus communis)
- Small scissor bee (Chelostoma campanularum)
- Wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum)
A cavity-nesting leafcutter bee (Credit: K. Tsiolis)
The survival of bees depends heavily on food and nesting resources, and both need to be considered for sustainable bee populations.
Bee hotels also make a great addition to a garden or green space, and below are some things to consider if you are thinking about installing one.
- Food resources: Solitary bees forage within 200-300 metres from their nesting site; hence ensure you grow a variety of bee-friendly nectar and pollen-rich flowers within this distance from bee hotel throughout their active season (March-September).
- Location: Your bee hotel needs to be in a warm, sunny location (e.g. South-eastern orientation). The heat from the sun is essential for adult bees to warm up in the morning and initiate their activities, but it is also vital to the development of their offspring. The bee hotel should be positioned against a wall or some other structure (e.g. fence), at least one metre above ground level. This is because bees will be looking for nest holes in landscape features, and as they are searching, they will find the bee hotel. Ensure that no vegetation is blocking the tunnels or causing shading to the bee hotel. Anecdotal evidence suggests that once a bee population starts using the hotel, more bees can be attracted to nest.
Interested in a bee hotel of your own?
PLT bee hotels are made by Robin Dean, a professional designer and maker of bee hotels. His company, The Red Beehive Company Ltd, is based in rural Hampshire, operating out of an old barn on a National Trust property.
Email: redbeehive@btopenworld.com
What you can do to help all pollinators
- Get in touch with PLT and complete a habitat review of your green space
- Become involved with our investigation of the impact of green space on health and wellbeing through surveys of those working and living in the City
- Incorporate pollinator biodiversity education into your corporate social responsibility initiatives
- Use the Flower-Insect-Timed App (FIT App) on your smartphone and help the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology to collect data on pollinators
- Use PLT resource guides to strengthen your green space’s pollinator friendliness