Sound asleep in our fridge
Yesterday, I decided it was time to let the Mason Bees get warmed up and ready for a busy pollinating season. Out of the fridge they came, and into their newly constructed and installed bee home they slide. Resting inside nesting tubes, it should take several weeks for them to do whatever bees do when they are finished hibernating, by which time, the plum tree should be in full bloom. Let’s hope we don’t have a cold snap.
Our bee house
The Knox Cellar site is surprisingly uninformative about how to raise Mason Bees and they sounded extremely rushed on the phone when I made an inquiry, but thankfully there is a wealth of information on the web as they are popular to raise in orchards. The Washington State Extension Service has a good set of links, though I’m certainly not planning on raising hundreds of bees here in the Central District.
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5 Comments
unsalted butter? I didn’t even know butter was salted
(I put this spam killer address at the end of each of my comments)
How have the Mason Bees worked out for you? I built a Blue Orchid Mason Bee habitat by drilling 5/16 inch diameter holes in a piece of wood. I hung it against my house on a sunny East-facing wall close to the overhang to avoid the rain. However, I haven’t noticed any takers. On the other hand, I didn’t purchase any bees.
Ah the bees. In our two years of having a bee house, we have not started a colony.
The first year, I put the bees out too soon, only to have that long bitter spring. Those bees mainly froze to death and the one or two that hatched were dazed and hungry with nothing to eat!
The second year, the squirrels, got into the box, grabbed the vial of bees, and ate them all like Judy Garland popping pills.
Poor bees! No luck thus far, but will try again with a new order of bees in mid-February.
Hahaha! Love your description of the squirrels. Maybe I’ll try ordering some bees in mid-February too. Thanks. Who do you order from?
We get the vials of bees from Swansons in Ballard. We have also got some tubes of bees (like the ones you drill holes for) from City Peoples via Knox Cellars (no, seriously, that’s the name and not related to me). Both run about $20 for 10 bees. Really. It is insane. We are going to try one more year this year, but then just stop bothering with trying to trick bees to live with us.