I made a bee bath
We are attempting to lure pollinators to our balcony (yes, so that I can photograph them...) and as part of this scheme, we built a "bee bath" out of a plant pot saucer .
Note the dirty Squirtle and Minecraft figurines.
You may recall having seen bees drinking water out of a flooded footprint or another small puddle - bees actually drink water visibly in the middle of the day like this, and they're happiest going to a garden when the garden has puddles for them to sip out of. Throwing rocks into a dish is a great setup for them.
We were worried about mosquito larvae, so we got some "dunks" to place in the water to kill them if necessary (though we'll probably have to cut them up to work in such a shallow bowl). However all the water in this dish totally evaporates in under two days, so if we just let it dry out regularly, I think we'll be okay.
We were worried about mosquitoes here because we had some pretty aggressive mosquito growth at a family member's house we were living in earlier this year, when LA had its heavy rains. We found standing water in buckets so full of larvae that they looked like schools of brine shrimp.
Anyway, we have yet to see bees actually drinking from this setup - partially because we do not yet have enough plants! We've gotta get more. In 2021 and 22 I went very heavy on balcony vegetables, but this year I think we're gonna pivot to native flowers. They're just less stressful to take care of.
Hopefully they will also get us more bugs! For me to photograph!!