Pre-registration required.

Cost: $25 (25% off for BGA Members)

Those crafty bees have evolved to nest in creative ways depending on their species.  Guess where mining bees nest? How about carpenter bees? What about squash bees? This class gives an overview of the variety of bee nests and provides pointers for selecting the best cavity nesting bee houses, just in time for those early spring mason bees. 

Instructor

Brannen Basham, with his wife Jill Jacobs, owns Spriggly’s Beescaping, a nature education and habitat restoration business from Western North Carolina. Brannen is a horticulturist and landscape designer who cut his teeth in the native gardens at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. Brannen presents regularly on a variety of nature-based topics, including pollinator-focused presentations with the Organic Grower's School, Cullowhee Native Plant Conference, and WNC Gardening Symposium, along with writing for local, regional, and national publications. Brannen has also published two books, a non-fiction collection of nature articles, A Guide to the Wonderful World Around Us and a children's book co-authored with his wife, Finding Home: A Story of a Mason Bee. They have an online course series, called Gardening for the Planet, that features over 16 hours of on-demand beneficial wildlife and sustainable gardening content. In addition, Spriggly's offers services to homeowners, businesses, and municipalities, focused on designing and implementing spaces to support pollinators, wildlife, and the ecosystem around them.

Photo of mason bee cell with egg on pollen by Phyllis Stiles

Become a “C.P.A.”

The Certified Pollinator Advocate program is a collaboration between The Botanical Gardens at Asheville and Bee City USA-Asheville. The certification requires a series of 12 classes on pollination ecology topics and volunteer hours, which are fulfilled as a “pollenteer” once at a Bee City USA - Asheville habitat development project and once at an outreach event.