Local DAR installs bee hotels at Farm and Ranch Museum

The Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces expects an upsurge in visitors due to some new hotels on their premises -- visitors of the multi-legged variety, that is.

The Doña Ana Chapter of the New Mexico Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (NMSDAR) installed five bee hotels at the museum to fulfill their state leader’s aspirations to raise awareness of the decline of pollinators. Two hotels stand in the Discovery Garden, with three poised in the proposed Native Plant Garden in front of the vineyard.

Hailed as bee hotels, these distinctive habitats are the culmination of State DAR Regent Patricia Barger’s idea to help save the planet. Regent Barger, of Rio Rancho, was in Las Cruces Dec. 10 for the dedication ceremony. Other daughters from across New Mexico joined with Doña Ana DAR for the ceremony at the museum.

“We greatly appreciate the DAR's gift to the museum and we look forward to including it in the future development of the Discovery Garden,” said Heather Reed, the museum’s executive director.

One of the museum’s goals on its strategic plan is to renovate the Discovery Garden on the northwest side of the building, Reed said.

“This garden will serve as an outside laboratory for our educators to teach school children and host adult workshops with a focus on increasing agricultural literacy,” she said. “The DAR’s gift of pollinator hotels contributes to the museum's focus of encouraging a greater understanding of how agriculture works and the importance of green space to our community and the state.”

“Our planet is in the middle of an insect apocalypse,” Barger said. “Pollinators are in crisis and dwindling in numbers due to the loss of critical feeding and nesting habitat.”

Her bee hotel project provides nesting habitats for pollinators. Bees are the predominant pollinators, but the hotels should also attract beetles, flies, ants, moths and butterflies, to name just a few.

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it,” Barger said.  The bee hotel project shows that “people can, on a very local scale, do positive things to protect pollinators, as opposed to larger scale environmental issues.”

Barger engaged NMSDAR members to build hotels for pollinators in peril. The Doña Ana chapter is the first NMSDAR chapter in the state to install the hotels.

“We are excited about the hotels,” said, Doña Ana Chapter Regent Linda Bartlett. “They help make southern New Mexico a little more hospitable to the dwindling numbers of pollinators, a world-wide problem. Making the hotels successful can definitely raise awareness and ‘bee’ a community effort.” 

DAR’s national Conservation Committee’s mission -- to educate members about pressing environmental issues and to encourage good stewardship practices for a more sustainable future -- is important to today's daughters, Bartlett said.

“There is no special criteria for the building of the hotel,” Barger said, “except that it be made of materials found in the pollinators’ natural habitat and that the objects be safe and untreated.” 

Hotels should be securely anchored and raised off the ground a sufficient height so that if there is a heavy rain the bugs are not harmed, Barger said. 

The NMSDAR Doña Ana Chapter daughters concluded that a tall hotel, the original goal, would be vulnerable because of the high winds of southern New Mexico, and opted for more small hotels rather than one large one. The hotels are situated in front of native wildflowers.

“If an entire community made small-scale changes like these, the payoff would be widely felt,” Barger said. “Ask yourself, ‘How can I help bees and other pollinators?’”

“We can all fight climate change by adopting sustainability behavior,” she said. “Everyone can do their part by planting a diversity of plants so a diversity of pollinators is attracted. We need to be biodiverse, and we want as many insect residents as possible. We can think creatively about how we manage our own yards and the public land in our communities. The next time you see a pollinator visiting a flower, know that their species has a better chance at survival with the launch of projects like this,” Barger said.

For more information, contact Shelton at 575-644-5121 and mlbs1@aol.com.