Category Archives: Bees

New Zealand’s Only supplier of Leafcutter Bee Cells to the Home Gardener!

Creative Woodcraft is a family run New Zealand business hand-crafting beautiful wildlife habitat, bird feeders and nesting boxes and other great garden products!

 

Creative Woodcraft is passionate about the future of bees in New Zealand and has teamed up with NZ pollination expert Dr Barry Donovan, of Donovan Scientific Insect Research in Lincoln, who has more than 50 years’ experience in the industry.

There is currently a great deal of attention focused on the future protection of honey bees throughout New Zealand, and quite rightly so. However let us not forget about the many other equally important pollinators out there, such as bumble bee’s and the numerous species of native solitary bee’s, which provide a huge impact on the success of our fruit and vegetables gardens, increasing pollination and in turn providing us with much greater yields.

Creative Woodcraft offers a proven solution to help gardener’s encourage native bees and help them to pollinate in their own backyard. At Creative Woodcraft you can purchase a solitary bee house and Leafcutter Bee Cells and have your pollinators ready for the warmer weather!

 

Pollinator friendly gardening 
Whether pollinator-friendly gardening sounds daunting or adventurous, it is in reality quite a simple and do-able task. By making an urban garden, regardless of its size, a welcoming place for insects and animals, you are helping to preserve essential pollinators, which in turn will help to make any garden thrive. The urban environment is not always best suited to pollinators, but by providing suitable nesting habitat and planting a garden focused on supplying their needs is one step in the right direction.
Why are pollinators essential to an urban garden? 
You may not always be able to observe pollinators in a garden, yard, or green space, but they are constantly present, and are actually working to your advantage. Not only are pollinators, such as bees, wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, bats an important part of the natural environment, but they also benefit us by their services to plants. As a group they pollinate fruits, vegetables, and flowers, both wild and domesticated, making plants healthier and more likely to produce a better quality harvest. The presence of pollinators in the urban garden can only be positive. Some solitary bees, for example nest in the ground, other types nest in holes in wood or trees, in an urban environment where suitable nesting habitat is scarce or in decline the use of solitary bee houses will greatly assist our pollinators.

Worldwide evidence shows that pollinator populations are declining, especially that of the honeybee. Not all the particular reasons are known, because the decline could be due to many factors, including the destruction of habitat. By creating attractive environments for pollinators in an urban setting you can provide essential habitats for these insects and birds. Habitats may not be widely available in a setting such as a new subdivision, unless otherwise provided or helped to develop. Pollinators, such as bumble bees and butterflies, are also very interesting to observe, and when you foster a pleasant pollinator-friendly garden you can experience a piece of pure, wild nature in your own backyard.

At creative wood craft we offer a wide range of habitat and products to assist our native pollinators in an urban environment.

Attract wildlife to your school, kindergarten or backyard…

For wildlife professionals, schools, conservation projects, farmers, builders and developers, you may like to consider introducing  products which can be used to help mitigate the effects of disturbance or loss of existing habitat. 

Source:ROSS GIBLIN/Fairfax NZ

Source:ROSS GIBLIN/Fairfax NZ

Creative Woodcraft’s  unique  product range, include nesting boxes for many species of birds, mammals and insects that will fit the bill perfectly.

Many of our products are well suited to assist in empowering children and students in early childhood centers and schools within nature gardens, habitat mitigation schemes and conservation projects in New Zealand.  All products are handmade to high standards and designed with their inhabitants in mind.

Attract wildlife to your school, kindergarten or backyard?

  • Solitary Bee Houses
  • Bumble Bee Nesting Boxes
  • Butterfly Houses
  • Bird Feeders
  • Bird Houses
  • Hedgehog Nesting and Feeder Boxes
  • And more……..

To view our product range (Click Here)

 

Attract and introduce leafcutter bees to your garden

Have you ever noticed holes in your plant leaves and assumed they were the work of a hungry caterpillar? Perfectly rounded  or oval holes on the edges of a leaf are usually the sign of a nearby nesting leafcutter bee.

Photo by Bernhard Plank

Leafcutter bees are one of a huge diversity of native bees that you can easily attract and introduce to your wildlife garden.

These neatly outlined holes on the edge of these leaves are the work of a leafcutter bees. Nectar plants will attract these bees, but to survive from year to year, leafcutter bees need overwintering nest sites, such as those available from www.creativewoodcraft.co.nz.


Unlike butterfly and moth caterpillars, or herbivorous beetles , leafcutter bees don’t eat leaves, but cut off small pieces of leaf to use in building their nests. Leafcutter bees are among a large number of bee species known as “solitary” bees because they don’t live in social hives, like honey and bumble bees. This is important, because bees without a nest to protect are very unlikely to sting you.

Providing habitat

Female leafcutter bees lay their eggs inside hollow plant stems or in existing tunnels in trees and solitary bee nesting houses and use leaf cuttings from nearby plants to build sturdy walls around the eggs to keep them safe and dry in their nest right through the winter. Both males and females visit flowers for nectar to fuel their flight, but females also collect pollen and nectar, which they use to stock their nests with a food supply for the young bees after they hatch. Hatchlings feed on these “pollen balls” til they emerge from the nest the following year.

Providing suitable nesting sites

If your property has brushy areas with lots of old plants, or a few trees with natural cavities, you could well already have resident leafcutter bee populations. But to really increase population survival from year to year (or if you live in more of an urban area where a more manicured look is sometimes required), you can provide nesting sites by hanging a “solitary bee house” which many native bees and other beneficial insects will readily use.

Available from www.creativewoodcraft.co.nz

Beneficial plants.

Leafcutter bees seem to have local preferences for the plants they like to use for nesting. If you see leafcutter holes on your plant leaves, please share with us the species! It’s always interesting to hear about regional preferences, and discover the plants in our backyards that provide the widest range of resources for wildlife…

Leafcutting Bee Cells, to get you started!

Leafcutting Bee Cells containing dormant Leafcutting bees are available at www.creativewoodcraft.co.nz and are shipped between Late April 2013 through to December 14th 2013 while stocks last.

They are offered for sale in sets of x 25
We suggest purchasing two sets to guarantee that you get a good colony going.
Creative Woodcraft Solitary Bee Houses are purposely designed to accept Leafcutting Bee Cells.

Introduction to the fascinating world of our native bee pollinators

Purchasing a solitary bee house from www.creativewoodcraft.co.nz is your introduction to the fascinating world of our native bee pollinators. It has
been specially designed to attract a variety of gentle, non-stinging native and introduced solitary bee species that nest from early spring through
summer. They might not make honey, but they are extremely efficient pollinators, and your garden will explode with color and produce as a result.

Check out our Special…. Everything to get you started!!

Solitary Bee House Package Deal! (Limited Time Only)

solitary bee house Creative Woodcraft

We can email you a  seasonal Newsletter: that really simplifies it for you by letting you know what you could or should be doing with your native  bees during each season of the year. If you’re interested in receiving it, go to our web site and click on Newsletter, to sign up. Thank you for your interest in our native bee pollinators!

We offer a FREE  full installation guide (https://creativewoodcraft.co.nz/blog/solitary-bee-house-instructional-guide/

And Register to receive our FREE e-book BEES