Since 250 of the 270 bee species in Britain are solitary buzzers, the city of Brighton and Hove is establishing mandates to use “bee bricks” in construction of all buildings above 5 meters to help encourage these solitary species to nest in them.
Bee bricks are what appear to be blocks of Swiss cheese but which are actually a normal building bricks created with small cavities into which bees typically nest. Old brick buildings and crumbing walls have been observed as excellent habitat for bees, and so Brighton and Hove are trying to deploy this simple invention to offer more room on the metaphorical bed for the pollinating insects.
They have also mandated “swift bricks,” which offer the same comforts of home, only for nesting swifts—tiny birds that spend a few months in the UK and then migrate to Africa. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is consulting with the government to identify which height on which buildings are ideal for the swift bricks.
“Bee bricks are just one of quite a number of measures that really should be in place to address biodiversity concerns that have arisen through years of neglect of the natural environment,” said Robert Nemeth, the town councilor behind the initiative, first introduced in 2019.
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Not everyone agrees that these bee bricks are a good idea. Some point to a lack of evidence that the holes are large enough for a bee nest, that they have a population impact, or that the holes have to be cleaned to prevent harmful mites from residing there.
However there are studies that find bees will build nests inside these holes and cap the entry ways to hibernate. Some scientists add that the mites will disappear after one or two seasons and that they don’t need to be cleaned.
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Green&Blue is an example of an eco-focused construction firm that currently offer bee bricks in the standard portfolio of building materials, as the differences in cost between normal bricks and bee/swift bricks are negligible.
Lars Chittka, a professor in sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University, told The Guardian that bees “naturally possess hygienic behavior that would allow them to mitigate the risks at least to some extent, or that they would assess the holes’ states before using them, which should to some extent counterbalance the risks that come with such long-term nesting opportunities.”
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