What is Bee Inventive?

Welcome to Bee Inventive's first blog!

We are a group of Year 12 Students from Stroud High School and Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire working on a project set up with Dr Adam Hart from the University of Gloucestershire and The Global Bee Project, to whom we will be reporting our findings.

Here's a quick update on our progress so far...

All houses are built and are out in Stroud High School's grounds and our partner school's, Marling's grounds. The aim is to attract as many solitary bees as possible in order to find out which type of nest hole they use and like the most. We have 4 variables; 8mm Cardboard Tube, 8mm drilled holes in a wooden block, 8mm square wooden slots and finally hollow bamboo tubes.

Take a quick look at our bee house design here

So, the houses are spread around the school site, specially placed near to a variety of species of plants, which should attract the bees who are excellent pollinators.

They are all equipped with data loggers (measuring temperature) which may help us see some trends in the use of the nest holes.

Regular observations are being made, but for now it's a sit and wait game. 

We will keep you updated with our progress but in the mean time have a good look at our flickr stream found here and maybe think about what you could do to help the solitary bees

Just a suggestion to keep you buzzy! End of puns!