Native Solitary Bee House, Tucson, AZ
Posted by: 
tugies
N 32° 10.358 W 110° 48.928
12S E 517397 N 3559585
A house for native solitary bees along the Atterbury Wash Greenway in southeast Tucson.
Parking is available at the main parking lot of Clements Regional Center, 8155 E Poinciana Drive. Park at the end and follow the asphalt path running southeast.
Waymark Code: WMJJZH
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 11/26/2013
Views: 27
Since one of the tugies has studied native solitary bees, we were excited to find this nice bee house in town. We have seen smaller ones on the outskirts of town placed by biologists from the U of AZ. This summer, we saw a huge new insect house at the San Diego Zoo.
Information about the bees and the house can be obtained at the site by scanning the bar code there, which sends you to a link to this article: (
visit link)
"The artist who constructed the house, Jason Butler first got the idea for doing this from Greg Corman. This article is written by him:
Arizona is home to more than 1300 species of bees. These important pollinators do their work with little notice and less credit while the honeybee, an imported species from Europe and Africa, gets all the attention. Honeybees form colonies as large as 50,000 individuals and are the “killer bees” we hear about in gruesome stories of attacks on humans and animals. In contrast, our native species are mostly solitary docile creatures that nest in holes in the ground or in dead trees and visit cacti, wildflowers and native trees and shrubs for pollen and nectar. In turn, they guarantee the successful fruiting of those plants. They are unruffled by human presence and will sting only if caught and even then, the sting is much less potent than that of a honeybee or wasp.
The house made from recycled wood and steel and was created to support leafcutter bees. The wood is drilled with small tunnels that the females use for nesting. Normally they would nest in dead tree branches where beetles have drilled holes for them, but in urban areas we tend to remove dead material for aesthetic or safety reasons and the bees go wanting for nest sites. A female bee will cut small pieces of leaves and shove them into the end of a tunnel and then deposit pollen, nectar and an egg. She will repeat the process until there are several cells containing eggs in each tunnel. The bee then seals the tunnel with chewed leaves, resin, sand or a combination of materials and leaves the eggs to develop and hatch on their own in a matter of weeks or months. She might repeat this process in several tunnels during her life of one or two months. Bee habitat sculptures are a great way to support pollinators that are essential for the health of our desert ecosystem".
Artist Jason Butler created several pieces of public art integrated with the design of the Atterbury Wash Greenway. These pieces include: benches, picnic tables, park identification sculptures, native bee habitats, whimsical birdhouses, and a bird nest inspired sculpture.
The three-quarter-mile path that goes by this house runs through Lincoln Park, linking the Fred Enke Golf Course, Pima College East Campus, Clements Center, the Children’s Outdoor Performance Area, the Lincoln Park softball complex, Lower Lincoln Park, and the Michael Lyman-Wash Animal and Bird Sanctuary. A central plaza is located along the path at the junction near the Children’s Outdoor Performance Area and the softball complex. The bee house is along the trail southeast of the plaza.