Mason Bee Keeping

Usually the females do all the work. Brady

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Thanks for posting the picture. Now I have a better idea what to look for.

I looked at mine last night and at first saw no activity. I sat there and watched from about 10 feet away and soon I saw several fly in and fly out. I took a plastic container and added some clay soil and water to make a slurry and sat it below the nest. It seems to be working. I see mud tracks on the wooden portion of the bee house. I also can see little drops of pollen in some of the holes which is a good sign. I have not seen them on my fruit tree blooms yet but in all fairness I only have a few pears and cherries in bloom right now.

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No, that’s too waspy, the bee is chunkier, w/o that yellow fuzz

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My bees are mostly hornfaced bees, tho I’ve been trying to introduce orchard mason bees. The mason bees are only just now hatching, well behind the hornfaced, and behind the cots this year.

This is why mason bees are so bad-ass. It’s not my pic, I found it on google. But it just shows you how they are like swiffer dusters.

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Boy it sure did look like Osmia cornifrons to me. Well huh, I guess it doesn’t matter too much as long as they move pollen around.

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Oh, I assumed you meant the blue bee, not the hornfaced.

Made a couple of mason bee houses today out of some maple logs I cut down last fall and some scrap wood I had laying around. Hung them around the orchard in hopes of attracting a few bees.

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Looks great.

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Gee, snowing this Easter weekend so I was worried about my little cocoons in the fridge. I want to put them out but with this weather I will have to wait until something starts to bloom. We peeked into the little box and they are still alive with very slight movement.

My masons are finally strutting their stuff. I was worried that the cacoons I bought might have been duds. But after inspection they’ve all hatched. They just took a little longer than I expected to get going. My daughter and I sat there watching the bee house and watched them constantly flying in and out. The odd thing is that I’ve not seen a single mason bee on any of my cherry or pear blooms. I see those large paper wasps on them but not the masons. The good news is that the masons are obviously happy and are finding the pollen they need from dandilions, dogwoods, etc.

I’ll be very interested to see how many viable cacoons I get from the laminates this fall.

My bees completely miss the Plum bloom.There aren’t even many Bumbles out then.
I like them though,so they can go after the Blackberries,Blueberries and maybe bush Cherries. Brady

I saw some activity at one of my newly installed bee-houses today. Didn’t want to get too close and spook them, but it looked like they where flying back and forth from the bee-houses to the container of mud I have sitting below it. There is plenty in bloom near by so they should do alright.

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Spotted several wild mason bees on currant bushes and was really surprised. I got the impression that they cannot survive our cold winters. Apparently they can though.

Mason bee on a Blueberry plant. Brady

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I love to watch the bees flying in and out of their nesting holes - so busy! I had to put out another block this week.

Some of them seem to have trouble finding the right hole, and they don’t like having to start in a new location.

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This year I saw a lot of mason bees at work when my cherry trees bloomed. It was a joy to watch them. Also I read an informative article about the mason bee cocoons.

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Here is a pic of my Mason bee house. Only two holes are completely capped over but there is a significant amount of activity around it so I think there should be a lot of partially filled holes. Find out this fall I guess

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I have one can of tubes completely capped off, a block like that one 2/3 filled, and an new one that they’re just deigning to start using.