This time last this time last week I learned something new. I learned about bees, a topic that I had never really given much thought until I chanced upon Beechworth Honey shop and wandered inside. (Just as an aside, I love that BEEchworth is known for honey!). 
I digress. What I learned is that Australia has over 1500 species of bees and most of these are solitary, native bees. They don’t live in hives and we can’t collect honey from them, but they are paramount in pollinating our plants which results in… Ta daaa… Food! Kinda important when you think about it.
Hey, are you bored yet? Hang with me because this is where it gets good. I promise.
These native bees, because they don’t live in a hive, look for little hollows or cracks in old logs to lay their eggs and some smart human came up with the idea of building a bee friendly habitat. They call them bee hotels and the bees go in to one of the little holes, lay their eggs, add some pollen and then mud up the entrance. When the eggs hatch, the hatchlings eat the pollen and break out of the mud entrance. How cool is that?
So I bought my very own bee hotel and I placed it above my herb garden on my balcony. Looks cute, huh? The Kilnacrott Bee Hotel was open for business! 
Amazingly my first resident moved on the very next day! I was out watering my herbs and I heard this little busy bee buzzing about. Then I saw her go into one of the holes and the next morning, voila! Job done!
I’m loving watching the action as the holes fill up (three so far) and wondering how long those little hatchlings stay in the hotel before they check out – I’ll have to google it.
If you think you would like your own bee hotel (do it!) you only need to google or Pinterest it and you’ll get a stack of hits on how to build your own bee hotel. Or you can be lazy like me and just buy one! Day trip to Beechworth, anyone?
Put It In The Soup 
