okay well today we have something interesting for you if you're like me
hopefully not but we're trapped here in the Northeast with freezing temps still
and record snowfall single digits in the morning and this is something that we
can do as a project to get ready for the coming spring and it's also by flow hive
but this is a method that they've developed for recycling some of their
old wood and cast offs from the flow hive components themselves and this is a
pollinator house flow hive pollinator hotel as it says here on the side of the
box and what this is for is not your honeybees this is for orchard bees and
mason bees and it comes with its own wrench everything is self-contained here
little driver self-tapping screws and they're all protected from the weather
it comes with a nice little instruction kit here and this is very simple and
very basic but I'll go over the components and I'm gonna put one of them
together for you already if you've seen some of my earlier dealing with bees in
winter videos you've seen these also out on fence posts in my field and these
things are pretty darn expensive I don't mind saying that and I'll explain why in
a moment so we start with the bottom of it put up the side you can see I've
already got the screws here on the right there and you can keep them a little
loose just to make sure everything fits up snug before you scream in tight I'm
also gonna seal up all the joints here with gorilla wood glue this is for
indoor outdoor use it's you can clean it up with water and the best part is it's
going to dry clear and it's not going to affect the appearance of the wood so
gorilla glue anyway I'll put a link to all of the
things I'm showing here down in the description I got the gorilla glue at Home
Depot it's pretty widely available anyway what I'm doing is just putting
the parts together and we're gonna press it up and this gorilla glue is
fantastic stuff just smear it around with your fingers and then you can rinse
your hands off later again the cleanup is really easy don't
worry about being tidy because it's gonna dry clear and it's gonna look like
nothing is there at all so here we go and again now the roof
parts come with screws but if you Center up the roof with the screws you're gonna
have to have a not push forward I wanted to push this
forward a little bit so I just sealed it all up with Gorilla Glue I'm gonna let
this sit overnight and then we're gonna take it outside and mount it up tomorrow
so this is it it's all put together couldn't be more basic and these are the
key inserts here that we're going to use these Reed's also come with it and
they're from Australia and this is what your Mason and orchard bees are gonna be
laying their eggs inside of so you can use lots of different things to create
these orchard bee houses these mason bee houses and I even have cross-sections of
trees that are cut that are six inches thick and I just drilled very variable
hole diameters in there and this is a close-up look at it that you can see
that all these different species of tiny pollinator bees that are independent
they're not social bees like the honey bees are and here's a great reference
guide and a guide to North American bees if you're having troubles identifying
them bottom center there's the honey bee of course but every kind of bee is in
this book and it helps you identify them and what their traits are another really
useful book that I want to recommend bees wasps and ants this one actually
goes into depth on these pollinator houses just like the ones we're putting
up here of course not the flow houses but other designs that you can use and
how these pollinator bees these independent bees that are solitary out
in the environment and do all their pollination work how and where they live
and this is very simple now the reason I'm doing this in the winter time is
because we want to get them out there as soon as the spring blossoms start coming
is when those that are already out in the environment start to hatch out and
they'll be looking for new homes you want to make sure these are already out
there and in place great activity for kids now look across the side here
they're all kind of different and unique and that helps these little solitary
bees find their homes and they'll start laying eggs course the females are the
ones that are laying the eggs but you should see a lot of activity here in the
coming months and this only happens in springtime so be ready also
congratulations and supporting habitat protection for pollinators I don't
disagree that these are expensive I spent over $70 apiece for them but 100
percent of the profit from your purchase of this flow pollinator house
will be donated to carefully selected charities working to protect habitat for
pollinators and other species who I got that out so it's a donation they're
using a hundred percent of their profits to benefit pollinators beyond the
honeybee so couple of books to read while the weather's so bad here's how
I've installed them outside even though again it snowed this morning already but
these are in place under an overhang facing east so they get that morning
sunshine and the warm up early but they're not on the south side where
midday they might get really too hot for these pollinators so get a couple of
these put them out make your own even and you're probably going to be upset
because a link that's going to connect you to these flow pollinator deals
they're out of stock right now but thanks for watching anyway I hope you
look into some of these pollinators that live individually and enjoy them in the
coming spring thanks for watching