Bee Hotels Monitor Pollinators on Drained Klamath Land

Six BeeOtels now sit across reservoir footprints in Oregon's Klamath Basin, where biologists track native bees through pollen DNA analysis.

Updated on Nov. 6, 2026 in Environmental

Weathered wooden nesting box with rows of small tube openings on pale cracked mud, young green seedlings in the foreground and distant conifers under a clear sky. — Six BeeOtel nesting boxes now sit on drained Klamath Basin reservoir beds in Oregon, where biologists analyze pollen DNA to track native bees. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

The firm RES, working with the Yurok Tribe and Belgian company BeeOdiversity, installed six BeeOtels across reservoir footprints drained in 2024 along the Klamath River. Each holds tubes for solitary, cavity-nesting bees, and the pollen collected is sent for DNA analysis.

Why it matters

Native bees relied heavily on invasive star thistle late last season, and pulling the weed without a late-summer replacement would leave pollinators without food. The monitoring gives restoration biologists data to adjust the plant palette as the former reservoir beds recover in Oregon.

Biologists are tracking pollen through DNA analysis from six installed BeeOtels, with plant diversity on one restored wetland up 93 percent in three and a half years. The extraction does not report pre-drawdown bee population baselines, and the herbicide detected in Lakeside Farms hive pollen remains unexplained.

The players

RES

RES is the firm restoring the Lower Klamath Project, a large-scale effort to return drained reservoir land to healthy ecosystems along the Oregon-California border.

Yurok Tribe

The Yurok Tribe is a federally recognized tribe whose ancestral territory lies along the lower Klamath River in northern California, and which is partnering on the Lower Klamath Project restoration.

BeeOdiversity

BeeOdiversity is a Belgian company that works on pollinator conservation and provided the BeeOtel boxes and monitoring approach used in the Klamath restoration.

The details

Tubes sized for solitary, cavity-nesting bees are placed in wooden boxes, and a biologist checks them through the field season before sending pollen for analysis. Billions of seeds and thousands of trees and shrubs have been planted since the four Klamath dams were removed.

2024: Reservoir footprints along the Klamath River were drained.
Late last season: Native bees relied heavily on invasive star thistle.
Three and a half years: Plant diversity on the Lakeside Farms wetland rose 93 percent.

Seasonal Patterns

The pollinator monitoring builds on the Klamath dam removals, which left reservoir beds to recover and planted billions of seeds and thousands of trees and shrubs. The effort tracks how native bees respond as these former lakebeds shift from invasive weeds like star thistle toward mixed native plant communities.

Restoration on former reservoir land could shape how pollinator habitat develops across the Klamath Basin in the coming years. Monitoring data may guide which native plants land managers prioritize as the drained beds recover.

The takeaway

Healthy pollinator habitat depends on a continuous food supply, so removing invasive plants works best when native replacements bloom in the same season. Restoration teams track both plant diversity and pollen data to confirm that the replacement plan is working.