A hotel has arrived at MRSN!

UrbanBEE is an international project, part of the Biodiversa+ partnership, focused on studying the diversity and abundance of solitary bees in urban environments by distributing bee hotels across the city.

The purpose is to figure out whether and how environmental and socio-economic factors impact the use of bee hotels by solitary bees in different districts of the cities involved: Vienna, Turin, Budapest, and Lund in Europe; Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Hararee in Africa.

One hundred eighty volunteers are expected to join the citizen science component in Turin. Recruitment is currently underway. The scientific monitoring involves the installation of 20 bee hotels in a number of green areas across the city, which will be used for the genetic monitoring of solitary bees.

The Austrian partner in the project will be undertaking this task.

More broadly, monitoring bee hotels is a data-driven approach to assessing urban biodiversity, the aim being to evaluate whether there is a direct correspondence between cavity-nesting bee activity and the ecosystem integrity of the surrounding environment.

Monitoring combines listening stations for birds, butterfly counting, domestic and wild apoid transects, flora and vegetation mapping.

The bee hotels are untreated pine wood structures, measuring 8 × 8 × 20 cm, designed to accomodate different species of cavity-nesting solitary bees, by mimicking natural cinditions.

The structures are lightweight and can be installed on vertical surfaces approximately 1.5 metres high with a small rear hook, sheltered from rain and intense summer afternoon sun.

The Regional Museum of Natural Sciences in Turin hosted a bee hotel while the pilot study was underway in 2025, playing an active role in monitoring and collecting data as part of the project.

The Museum will continue to steer the assigned tasks in 2026 by hosting a new UrbanBEE hotel and maintaining its partnership with the University of Turin. The goal of providing data collected for a second-year study is to contribute to the analysis of the solitary bee population trend in the city of Turin.

To apply, please complete the Google Form on UrbanBEE's Instagram page or by clicking on this link.