Why do we need a bombidarium: attracting bumblebees for pollination

A profusely blooming spring garden can disappoint with a meager autumn harvest. This happens because most garden crops cannot pollinate themselves. They need helpers. Attracting hymenoptera insects to your plot is an excellent solution.

Best Garden Pollinators: Bumblebees

These furry insects are unrivaled in plant pollination. Their long proboscises penetrate parts of the flower stalk that are most inaccessible to other insects. Compared to the industrious bee, the bumblebee is a real workaholic: it pollinates five times more plants, working 18 hours a day. Bumblebees also work in cool, rainy weather.

These furry workers live in families of 100-200 individuals. They reproduce during the summer. In the fall, the bumblebee colony dies, leaving behind several young, fertilized females for the winter, who will reproduce the following spring. They burrow into the ground and hibernate until early spring.

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Bombidarium: a house for bumblebees

As soon as the snow melts, the young females wake up and begin searching for a nest. At this time, you can invite the queen bee to settle in your garden plot: build a bombidarium (from the Latin bombus, meaning bumblebee).

Bumblebees are undemanding and require little care, so building their home isn't expensive. It can be any structure: a lidded box, a wooden log with holes, an old flowerpot—it all depends on the imagination and tastes of the amateur gardener.

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Externally, the bumblebee nest resembles a birdhouse. The optimal interior dimensions are 20 x 20 x 20 cm. It is buried in the ground up to the roof. A bumblebee tube (a 50 cm long pipe with one end above ground) leads into the nest. A 2 x 2 cm entrance is made near it.

What to consider when building a bombardment

The design is simple to make and operate. But to ensure it's a hit with your buzzing family, you need to follow a few rules:

• You cannot construct a bumblebee house from fresh boards, plywood or logs - the material must be aged, dry, and free of foreign odors;
• coniferous trees are not the best material for a bombidarium, they are too resinous;
• Before burying the house in the ground, it is better to wrap it in film;
• Insulate the inside with batting, synthetic padding, or felt.

Striped pollinators are attracted by the smell of rodents and often settle in mouse holes. Place a piece of a mouse nest or some pet hamster bedding there. In the fall, when the nest is empty, disinfect it: pour boiling water over it and treat it with a potassium permanganate solution.

If everything is done correctly, a bumblebee colony will move into the house and begin actively colonizing it and the surrounding area. Larvae will grow in the wax honeycombs, gradually transforming into furry, buzzing insects ready to mate. At the end of summer, they will die—and everything will repeat itself with the arrival of spring. The bombidarium will be bustling with life, and the garden harvest will delight its owner.