This is the new Welcome sign at Ferry Meadows. It’s a massive bug hotel, as you can probably see from a closer examination of the individual cells in the picture. It seems that this is a new fashion I had been totally unaware off, as can be seen from this site, for example. The one at Ferry Meadows can be seen better in this picture and has been built by Green Earth Habitats.
I’m not sure if they are better than having plain bug hotels around the place. If they were actually properly publicised I could see he point, but posting them on Facebook and Instagram isn’t doing it, whatever people may think. Look at it this way. I live on the doorstep and I didn’t know about it because, like many other people I don’t use social media.
The other thing they are doing is the Bee Bank. This is as much as i could find about it, so i had to dig a bit further.
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And, as I suspected, it’s a bank made up to provide habitat for bees and, butterflies, according to Ferry Meadows, though butterflies don’t need banks, they need appropriate food plants. I suppose a bank gives a patch of warm earth for them to draw warmth from, but that’s about as far as it goes. Everyone else seems to call them Bee Banks. I will remember it when we redesign the garden, but I’m not sure it’s going to be easy to fit one in.
Small Tortoiseshells on red buddleia
If it help call attention to the plight of pollinators, then I would deem it a good thing.
I don’t know if you have heard of this organization, the Xerces Society.
https://xerces.org/
I’ve never heard of them, but they are clearly doing important work. The Monarch is an amazing butterfly, isn’t it? Though it will clearly have to change its habit of flying across borders . . .
As we Mainers would say, that is some bug hotel! Also, I do love the picture of the Peacock butterfly. Such a beautiful creature.
It is a very early Peacock to be on a crocus. I took it a few years ago and can’t resist using it now and again. It must have been one of the ones that survive by hibernating through winter in a garden shed or similar.
Bee banks are a new concept for me, but we have been using bug hotels for a long time – not as splendid as the one in your photograph.
And, I suspect, much more economical. I’m currently looking for bits of wood to build our own.
But how do they work?
The banks are basically banks of sand that bees can burrow into for nests. With it being free of vegetation in places it warms up nicely. The bug hotel is just a collection of small habitats – wood, holes, leaves, hollow stalks, straw, where insects can shelter from the weather and the birds pass the winter safely.
That is a very fine bug hotel. I hope that it gets plenty of guests as time goes on.
It would be nice to think so, but I wonder if it would be better in a less open position. Looks like it could be cold in winter.