“Insects, worms and other small animals that carry out vital functions for life on earth have declined by 45 percent on average over 35 years, threatening human health, water quality and food supplies…”
-Steve Connor, “Vital invertebrates decline by 45 per cent, study finds,” independent.co.uk, July 2014.
Most people do not realize how much of an impact insects have on the way we live. From bees and other insects pollinating flowers that give us some of our favorite crops from apples and all the way to tomatoes and almonds. The rapid decline of all insects because of the pesticides used on these crops has led to a crisis with pollination and over all habitats for theses insects growing smaller every year. When I learned how bad the and fast the dying of the bees had become I really took and interest in this project. Through my research I learned that the bee pollination crisis had gotten so bad in some places like almond farms that the scarcity of bees had forced the farmers to hire bee keeps to bring in bees every spring to pollinate the trees because the bees that had formerly pollinated the trees had been killed of by the pesticides used on the trees.
Form My project I wanted to build a structure that could house multiple different kinds of insects. Though my design changed throughout the project my main focus was to have a sturdy structure that would hopefully last through a few winters and not be easily targeted by vandals. For the structural wood I used reclaimed urban lumber and natural materials such as branches sticks and leaves found near the river. The spaces with leaves in the structure are for any insects and the spaces with the nesting tubes are for mason bees. I would like if my structure was mounted to a tree stump if possible otherwise standing on cinder blocks near the base of a tree.
The maintenance for the finished motel will be to refill the different pockets with leaves and replace the mason bee nesting tubes.