Pollinator Hotel: New Hotel Welcomes Bees and Other Pollinators Who Lost Their Homes

A pollinator hotel has been reported built in the town of Normal in Illinois, United States. This makes it one of the latest designs of the unique structure seen serving displaced pollinators in recent years. The new hotel in the Illinois town has been established to give bees and other pollinators a second shot in life after losing their natural habitat, which were either destroyed due to natural causes or human activities.

Pollinators are known for transferring pollen of flowering plants, which mostly rely on the winged animals to achieve a successful sexual reproduction. While birds, bats, and other species also act pollinators, bees, ants, and insects in general provide the most pollination workload.

Over the past decade, the so-called pollinator hotels have been growing to provide artificial nesting sites and other features which resemble their natural habitat, including bee hives. A structure made of wood from bamboo and other related material from trees.

Various threats to pollinator habitats such as invasive plants and animals, pesticides, climate change, and diseases have been reported by various US government agencies. As a result, flowering plants and its immediate ecosystems are at risk.

Normal Town Pollinator Hotel

(Photo : Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Created by the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University, the pollinator hotel has been placed in The Refuge Food Forest by Town of Normal, according to Heart of Illinois ABC.

The local media outlet said kids from the STEAM camp of the Children's' Discovery Museum were supposed to help fill the hotel with pollinators. However, the activity was cancelled due to the inclement weather.

Rachel Carpenter, the educational manager for the museum, stated getting children and students to be enthusiastic about their local pollinators is fundamental. Without the pollinators, there will be no bee population, resulting in the absence of fruits and vegetables, Carpenter adds.

Also Read: Rainbow Bee: How Human Activity Influences This Useful Plant Pollinator

Who are the Pollinators?

Aside from bees, the following insects and mammals below act as important pollinators. These animals visit flowers and consume nectar or feed pollen, and most importantly transport pollen grains from different locations:

•  Birds
•  Bats
•  Beetles
•  Butterflies
•  Moths
•  Flies
•  Wasps
•  Small mammals

According to the U.S. Forest Service (FS), pollinators are responsible for supporting more than 80% of Earth's flowering plants to reproduce.

FS emphasizes that without pollen-transporting animals, humans and wildlife will have nothing to eat or even look at. Aside from the animal pollinators, forces of nature like wind and water also play a role in the pollination of many plants.

Pollinator Habitat Loss

The emergence of pollinator hotels is mainly caused by the decreasing available space for the pollinators to live in.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) states the habitat that pollinators need to survive are "shrinking" as native vegetation is replaced by anthropogenic structures like roadways, lawns, non-native gardens, and among others.

Similar cases of habitat loss, as well as the declining population of bees and other pollinators have been occurring worldwide, according to the National Park Service (NPS).

Related Article: Bee Blitz: Four New Pollinator Species Discovered in Australia