A new chain of hotels in the center of Belgrade has opened for tourists who like to buzz.
Food and accommodation are free and no prior reservations are required.
If you are a bee, especially a single bee, it is enough to fly to the "Jevremovac" Botanical Garden, turn left and soon you will come across a wooden house with lots of holes.
Each of these cavities, hollowed out in wood or reeds, is a separate room where the bees can settle.
"We are used to constantly cleaning fallen leaves, rotten stumps, and these are all places where bees could build nests.
"Hotels for bees, and for insects in general, are a way to give them back everything we took from them and thus provide them with a place where they will leave their descendants", says Jovana Bila Dubaić, assistant professor at the Faculty of Biology in Belgrade.
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In addition to the Botanical Garden, hotels for bees have also been set up in Topčider Park and the yard of the Faculty of Forestry.
"It is completely safe to approach these hotels.
"Unlike honey bees, solitary bees do not have the instinct to defend the nest and will not sting you," explains Bila Dubaić as she gently moves a bee with her finger that has just landed in the hotel in the Botanical Garden.
Who are solitary bees?
"When we say bee, we usually think of honey bees, which live in controlled conditions, in beehives.
"However, there are many bees and they are all important," explains Bila Dubaić.
There are 20.000 species of these insects in the world, while 850 were discovered in Serbia.
They can be of different colors and sizes, and some are three centimeters long.
They have in common that they transfer pollen from one flower to another by pollinating the plants from which the fruits will be produced, and that is why it is estimated that every third bite of food depends on these insects.
"The planet looks like this today thanks to pollinators that enable plants to reproduce sexually," says Bila Dubaić.
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Unlike honey bees, solitary bees live alone and do not make honey.
Honey is "winter food" for bees, which they provide for themselves during the cold months when there are no flowers.
Solitaries do not need this kind of stock because they live very short - up to six weeks, says Bila Dubaić.
Terrace Hotel
Insect hotels don't have to be big.
Bees will also be happy to choose wooden houses filled with cavities, which can be made or purchased.
By placing them in the garden or on the terrace, the plants get safe pollinators.
Mirjana Radojičić from Belgrade bought the hotel in March of this year and the guests arrived very quickly.
"The bees have laid eggs, so we can expect new ones," he says with a laugh.
She has been gardening for more than ten years and says that plants bring her "joy and peace".
"People should observe the world around them.
"There are bees that live alone and we can support them by setting up a hotel like this," he says.
Every bee has a room
During their short life, the main job of these bees, in addition to pollination, is to provide offspring.
The first task is to find a safe place where they can build a nest and lay an egg.
They choose tunnels, cavities in dead wood, tree stumps, and some even dig holes in the ground.
There they make 'rooms' for the young, covering them with various materials and separating them so that each bee has its own space.
Tucked away like that, the eggs slowly develop.
"The eggs will hatch into larvae that feed on what their mother left for them.
"She will then cocoon, a cocoon will be formed inside which she will continue to grow. This is how it will spend the winter and next spring or summer, it will turn into an adult," says Bila Dubaić.
As he carefully opens one of the reeds in the hotel, he shows what the cocoons inside look like.
Black crumbs can be seen on the hard balls, excrement left behind by the larva after it ate food, he says.
Cocoons can be moved and this temporary relocation will not harm the baby bees.
"The space is first filled with eggs from which the females will emerge, and then the males.
"The reason is that in the spring the males would fly out first, feed, and be ready to welcome the females," he says.
When they fill the rooms with eggs, the bees cover the holes with mud so that their offspring stay safe.
"Their strategy is to provide as much food as possible to their own babies, to protect them from pathogens, parasites, and the cold.
"Then they die, and in fact their babies will continue that life cycle".
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