Better ‘bee’-lieve it – hotels for bees

Jun 04, 2015

16 bee hotels installed across Canada

It’s no surprise to anyone to hear that bees are an integral part of agriculture. They are responsible for pollinating a large amount of the food people eat.

With the recent decline in colonies and the debate over whether to limit or simply ban neonicotinoids, pollinator bee health has become a hot button issue in the agricultural community.

In an effort to promote bee health and give them a place to rest and nest, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts are building 16 bee hotels throughout Canada.

"Solitary bees are a critical part of sustainable urban food production and habitat loss is a real impediment to bees' ability to pollinate much of the food that we rely on across Canada," said Jane Mackie, vice president, Fairmont Brand. "By building more than a dozen luxury bee hotels from coast to coast, we are doing our part to build a more sustainable world."

The hotels - constructed out of wood, twigs and soil, will house between 10 and 20 bees and will be placed in an area where the bees will have the opportunity do their important work – like the rooftop garden of Toronto’s Royal York.

"Bees need two things to make more bees – they need food in the form of flowers, and a place to nest – bee hotels, ground nests, and natural habitats," said Vicki Wojcik, research director of Pollinator Partnership. "If every Canadian household were to build a bee hotel, we would have close to 17 million new bee habitats. If each of these were used by one bee to make a nest for 10 baby bees, that's 170 million more native bees to pollinate our food and flowers."

Interested in building a bee hotel? There are many different instruction resources available including Grow Wild and Instructables.

The bee hotel program is part of WILD FOR BEES, an initiative that includes Burt’s Bees, Pollinator Partnership Canada, Sustainable TO Architecture + Building and Vancouver’s Hives for Humanity.

Video: Making the Most of Every Drop - Philip Harder

In water limited environments, like the Canadian Prairies, water limitations are a consistent challenge to agricultural production. Water conservation is imperative for dryland production, and for irrigated acres in periods of reduced allocation, and so understanding crop water use, its spatial variability, and how to manage it is crucial to make the most of every drop.

This session will discuss crop water use dynamics, how and why it varies between crop types, tools and approaches to quantify soil moisture, and the capacity of agricultural practises to manage soil moisture in this challenging environment.

Dr. Phillip Harder is the Research Director & Hydrological Scientist at Croptimistic Technologies. He grew up on a family farm near Saskatoon and studied Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan (PhD 2018). He is focused on improving the understanding of the relationships between hydrology and agriculture, and its spatial variability, on the Canadian Prairies. The overarching motivation of his work is to develop knowledge, and tools, to improve agricultural outcomes and reduce water-related risks for producers.