Bees and flowers

Posada el Quijote – A pollinator friendly hotel.

Through the years, we have had the pleasure of having Professor Gordon Frankie from the University of California, Berkeley, visiting us along with his colleagues and students. Gordon is an expert in bees and along with projects in his home state, he has among others run a long term project studying the great variety of local bees in Guanacaste, as well as other projects in Costa Rica, which has made him a regular visitor at Posada el Quijote (Having been a regular guest of the hotel since it first opened its doors around 25 years ago, he probably knows the hotel better than us in many ways 🙂 ).

Through his stays at Posada el Quijote while we have been the managers (Since 2013), Gordon has helped us develop our garden, helping us acquire plants that are particularly attractive to local varieties of bees. Incidentally, these plants are also normally very beautiful and colorful, and also attract large amounts of butterflies as well as humming-birds, – all great side-effect of helping the local bees 🙂
-For the bees in particular this appears to be bearing fruit, with Gordon having recorded around 20 different local varieties of bees on our property, a figure that we soon hope to get up to 40, out of the 700+ species known from Costa Rica.

For any guests scared of bee-stings; don’t worry, the bees are normally fully harmless, and often are stingless bees, and we have yet to have anyone being stung. We would recommend guests to spend some time around some of the flowers in the garden, and learn to appreciate the great variety of bees, and the diligent work these do in terms of pollinating our plants.

Several samples of local bees are included in this posts, and others can be seen in the poster we have in our breakfast area (photos captured by Gordon’s good friend and photographer Rollin Coville, who we have also had the pleasure of welcoming to Posada el Quijote many times).

Gordon has been kind enough to share some of his books with us, and we would be happy to let you see them and read more about local bees and flowers (just ask the owners to have a look). We would also recommend that you visit Gordon’s website (www.helpabee.org) for further information.