this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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I just helped my neighbor replace his front lawn with low-growing roman chamomile and lavender. I’m hoping to rig up a little solar powered water feature using secondhand parts soon.
I have getting ready to replace the holes in the solitary bee house I set up at my parents’ place:
I've been cutting 6" sticks from storm damaged tree limbs, and drilling the various-size holes (I've got a set of 8" metric drill bits that get the full-length they need (some folk just use cardboard tubes or reeds, but this works fine for me. It's important to replace the sticks every year after they emerge so we don’t propagate diseases or parasites in the solitary bees.
Once I find a couple 6"x1" oak boards (maybe when someone throws out a bed?) I’ll be able to cut the arching back pieces for a wood and cast iron park bench I'm trying to fix up. I need to take a wire wheel to the rusty metal parts, then paint it and fabricate the wooden parts of the back (I already have the slats for the seat but they do need to be sanded, stained, urethaned, and attached). Then I can put it out near our local bike path.
Need to put a new tire and tube on my front bike wheel.
One of my hobbies is fixing up ewaste laptops and giving them to an organization in my city that rehomes refugees. I actually do ewaste in general, mostly through our local Buy Nothing groups, (everything from HDMI adapters to space heaters) but the modern-ish laptops go to the charity. I was able to get three laptops ready to go recently, and I'll be looking for more to work on for folks in my community next.
The Lenovo and MacBook Air came from a friend at the recycling center - he's allowed to set computers aside for donation if he catches the people dropping them off and gets permission, otherwise they get sent away for secure destruction. He also gets me laptop chargers sometimes too, which saves a ton of money. The one in the middle I found in corporate ewaste (I got permission to dig through on occasion). Everything's been tested and wiped and updated as far as it'll go. This set was easy, they were all intact, so I didn't have to get any replacement parts.
I’m also working on a set of photobashes, styled like postcards from a solarpunk future, that I'm hoping will help push the visual aspect of solarpunk art more towards the rest of the movement. I want people to see solarpunk art and think, "why aren't we doing that?" or “could that work?” I think it should depict a more lived-in, human future and demonstrate possibilities, technologies, and alternative ways of doing things. I'm also trying to cover seasons, locations, and topics like industry that I haven't seen in other solarpunk art to sway people's first impressions from thinking it's an empty aesthetic. I try to advocate for values like reuse I think fit the movement but are underrepresented in the visual artwork.
What is that thing in the tree? A bee house? Will it call a swarm of bees? I have only a couple small trees, but I don't really want a swarm..
Yes, it's a home for solitary bees. There are a bunch of species of solitary bees, who don't live in hives or swarm with others. They're still an important part of our ecosystem and play a big role in pollination but they don't get quite as much attention as the honeybees.
They collect pollen to survive and to feed their young. Typically they find a hole of the right size, like the ones in these sticks, and make a bunch of compartments inside (out of mud or chewed plant fibers) where they lay their eggs. They give each egg some pollen they've gathered and seal them in for the winter. In the spring the eggs hatch and new bees emerge, eat the pollen, dig their way out, and start the cycle again.
It's good to identify the kinds of bees you want, since they need different size holes, and to put the house somewhere the morning sun will hit it, near some flowers or flowering shrubs.
It's a nice way to help provide habitats. Solitary bees are typically pretty skittish and won't/can't form angry swarms because of the whole solitary thing. Carpenter bees will sometimes fly close to humans, but mostly because they're just big curious bumbling buddies and they're nearsighted. Once they figure out what you are they fly away. I've never had any trouble with the residents of our bee house.