By JENNIFER AMATO
Staff Writer
SOUTH BRUNSWICK — The buzz this summer is a local park being a hotbed for hotels.
“It’s a hotel, but we’re not charging rent,” said Eric Gehring, a naturalist with the Middlesex County Office of Parks and Recreation. “They pay us back in their ecological services.”
Fitzgerald researched the project by searching through the internet, looking at various websites and pictures and by visiting a few other pollinator boxes and homes in the local area.
“This project was important to the environment and to myself because the loss of pollinating insects such as moths, bees, butterflies and various other bugs are affecting the plants around us. Without pollinators the plants we eat and enjoy cannot grow, reproduce and be healthy. Simply, without the bugs we don’t have food,” he said in an interview.
So far, two varieties of these “hotels” are in the middle of a field of tall grass, visible to the public.
In the first scenario, a 1-foot-tall log with a series of drilled holes is mounted on a post. Covered by a shingle, it provides solitude to an insect, like the bee, which lays its egg within the shelter in the spring or fall, Gehring said.
“Typically, a solitary bee will create a chamber in the nest block, lay her egg along with a ball of pollen and nectar that she creates called bee ‘bread,’” he said. “When the egg hatches, the larvae eats the food its mother left behind.”
The other type of hotel is a square structure with a domed roof standing 4 feet tall, also taking advantage of the shingle’s protective features.
“A variety of nesting grounds will bring in more species,” Gehring said, adding that there are currently 4,000 species of native bees in North America.
As of late, the federal government has mobilized the public to preserve pollinator habitats, according to the statement.
“Most bees are solitary nesters,” Gehring said. “In modern yards, the desire for neatness has reduced the number of nesting sites for native bees — bare ground, dead trees, tall grass. About 30 percent of our native bees nest in cavities: old logs, trees with empty beetle tunnels, plants with hollow stems, like bamboo.”
Contact Jennifer Amato at jamato@gmnews.com.
