Helping Ninjas, County Parks partner to help bees

Helping Ninjas has joined efforts with Hamilton County Parks & Recreation Native Bee Hut Coordinator, Holly Faust, to install native bee huts and reeds onto 39 trees across 100 acres of land at Cool Creek Nature Center in Carmel.

The Native Bee Hut Project is an initiative to create awareness and educate the public about native bees, and the Helping Ninjas donated the native bee huts that will be wired to trees throughout the acreage at Cool Creek Park – particularly placed near areas that have a succession of continue wildflowers.

A native bee hut has many reeds of various diameters to attract mason bees, leaf cutter bees and hole nesting bees.

“We focus on hole nesting native bees because 75 percent of our native bees actually nest in the ground. It is not feasible to dig up a groundnesting bee nest and rummage through it and expect them to survive. It is much more feasible to study native hole nesting pollinators,” said Frost.

While the native bee huts do provide additional habitat, according to Faust, another reason for installing them is to find out how many different species of native hole nesters are in local habitats, which ones are not, and how they are affected by the non-native honey bees.

“Interestingly enough, the same species may not show up every year,” said Faust. “This data is gathered as part of the Native Bee Hut project and will be sent to the Native Bee Network.”

The Native Bee Network of Crowne Bees is part of a larger movement called Projects For Good, and through this Crown Bees hopes to gain more funding for its Bee Ambassador program that will help them to find people, extension services and conservation districts across the nation willing to install Native Bee Huts.

The Native Bee Network saying is “Supporting Native Bees One Backyard At A Time,” said Faust. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to help in research and contribute to getting native bees on organic farms and in the public. I’d like to find out what we have in our parks – our backyard – and then continue to support our native bees.”

“Our bees need to be found, increased in numbers, and then placed back into native environments where they can thrive,” says Dave Hunter of Crown Bees, Meddville, Wash. “It’s not only about food for us, it’s also about pollinated maples, which supply habitat for deer, or seeds for quail and mice.”

Helping Ninjas has donated the 39 Native Bees Huts to help launch the Native Bee Hut project and will help to install them before the end of spring, Helping Ninjas has hopes to help Faust in the future to place more huts in surrounding areas of other Hamilton County parks.

Faust hopes that this project will help to educate the community that this is something anyone can do your own back yard.

To view more info on this project, click here.