Social Innovation: The Bee Hotel (Biodiversity Issues)

The survival of mankind is relaying on the animals and plants as the sources of food, medicine and other products originated from it. This is why the biodiversity is very important to ensure that we can continue going through life without any problems. One of the biodiversity that is important and crucial in our food supply is insects specifically all the bee’s species. This is because, bees is one of the major insects that responsible in pollinating our plants and crops. Without them, our crops could not be pollinated and producing sufficient foods for us. Regarding this issues, in order to make sure our bees will not extinct is by building specific shelter that I called as the bee hotels.

            This social innovation proposal idea is suitable to be implemented in the urban or suburban area which I think would not support this bees to build their nest or colony. This is because, as we all know urban or suburban areas in Malaysia if there is bee’s colony build their nest on or besides the building, we usually will get rid of it by calling local authorities to terminated it. This will make the bees cannot live in these area even though it still important for pollinating all the plants that were planted in the city area. Some of the plants were in the urban residential area and some restaurant also growing their own vegetables.

            The first steps in building this bee hotel is to sketch out the shelter itself. The size should be appropriate to the area where it will be placed. This will include the type of the shelter, the size and also the materials that used to build the shelter. The materials can be made up from unused and recycle materials. After the suitable size and materials used to build the shelter were identified and planned, next is to identify and plan how to setup the shelter in the real situation. In this steps, what should be done is determined the safe distance of people (the public) to go as closed to this bee hotel. This is because, once this shelters were build, we wanted to avoid and minimize as much as possible human to interrupting the bee colony that stay in the shelter. Moreover, this also will prevent harmful conditions like the bees attacking the people. To obtain this, a fences will be built around the bee’s hotel at least 3 to 5 meters. This can make sure there is no other unauthorized personal disturbing the bee colony.

            The next step which is very important is to identify which area is suitable to build this bee’s shelters. My intention is to use an areas know as buffer zones that already exists in the urban area. Buffer zones were the areas where normally separated residential areas and industrial areas. This area is to make sure the pollution that may occurs in the industrial area will not reach the residential areas. Due to banning of building any infrastructure in this areas, it is very suitable to build this bee’s hotel. Moreover, the interruption of human to the bee’s shelter will be at its minimum.

            Last but not least to involve the local communities on board with this idea. First what I wanted to do is to contact local town agencies. This is to make sure, I got the permission to build this bee’s hotel in the buffer areas. Next is to gather all the people that can help me building this shelter. I really hope this social innovation proposal can be done and helps ease the issue regarding the biodiversity theme.

Source: Return to Now