A young Australian ecologist travels from town to town building bee “hotels” and educating children and adults alike about the importance of making room for native insects.
Australia has a high prevalence of solitary bee species: that is, bees that don’t live in colonies or hives and potentially don’t even make honey. Nicknamed the “Bee Man,” his dream is to ensure no more go extinct.
23-year-old Clancy Lester’s interest in entomology was first ignited when he embedded himself with the Yolŋu (that’s pronounced YOL-gn-oo) Aboriginal people in Australia’s Northern Territory, and saw first-hand how their livelihoods were affected by declines in native bee species.
Annual harvests of honey from native bee species not only represent a joyous and nutritious part of their traditional diets but also a feature in traditional songs and fables.
Declines in the populations of honey-making bees, which Lester says is due to a combination of habitat loss and over-application of pesticides in agriculture, is slowly robbing this and future generations of Yolŋu people of their birthright.
Seeing empty hives, he told ABC News AU, lit a “fire in his belly”.
These days, Lester conducts school workshops and community-based conservation projects teaching how people can make simple changes to make room for bees, either planting native species and converting median strips and road verges into native floral beds—or building bee “hotels.”
BEE-AUTIFUL STORIES: ‘Stingless Bees’ Bring Life Back to the Amazon With Medicinal Honey and New Income
“It’s one of the simplest ways of simulating, as best as we can, the natural environment where native bees and other insects will nest in,” Lester said.
Lester has put together a variety of resources that anyone can access on the internet about how to build one of these little structures, 800 of which he has overseen across Australia.
“Then, when it goes into someone’s garden, they might start to see little bits of leaf from a leaf cutter bee or some tree sap from a resin bee, and that gets them to engage and stay connected with native pollinators.”
MORE FIGURES LIKE THIS: The Steve Irwin of Mushrooms: Paul Stamets Works to Save Rare Ancient Fungus to Protect Us From Pandemics
Lester says his conservation hero is the dearly departed countryman Steve Irwin, and has no problem bringing a similar level of enthusiasm when presenting to school kids, community groups, or town councils.
SHARE This Young Man’s Mission To Benefit The Bees…