pollinaters are working

Yes took them awhile to get going this year No honeybees just Bumblers and not all that many hope they have a good year

I bought this bee house at a flea market last week. It's supposed to keep pollinator bees in the area where I have fruit & nut trees. $10 it was. Hopefully it helps.

AJE >> WOW! I never heard of that before. Do you know of anyone that uses them, and what success do they have?

Is it just drilled holes in a piece of wood with a roof? Might not be to hard to make a few if they would work.

Here's where I 1st heard about them:
http://www.livingthecountrylife.com/gardening/building-bee-nesting-block/

I do not know anyone that's tried 1.

Thanks for that article. Very interesting.

I was cutting rafter tails of 20 year old poultry houses and they have bumblebees bored into them.

Hives of domestic bees around here are having a heyday with the sweet clover.

I see more hives of domestic bees around farm country here than I used to 20 years ago. I think some are Amish's.

The "BEE" House" you picture is for native solitary bees, most likely mason and/or leaf cutters bees. They work but there are better designs and it is important that for mason bees the holes or tubes provided for them be deeper than 6" or you are just putting out a trap for them. Mason bee fill those hollows with a series of mud chambers filled with pollen and an egg. From back to front they make separate chambers for females first. The outside 5 chambers are for males(approx 6") as only one male needs to survive predators/parasites to fertilize all females. If hollow is too shallow they with only produce males bees(not good for reproduction). Studies show that hollows deeper than 14" is about the max for increasing number of female chambers. Mason bees are 5 times more efficient pollinators than Honey bees but only live into mid summer before dying(sadly they don't produce honey). They are very local bees, rarely traveling more than 100yds for hatch site so they can become "extinct" from areas very easy but are also fairly easy to reintroduce if provided a pollen source and nesting sites(natural or manmade).

The "badlands" in SoDak grow sweet clover very well, and there are many bee colonies set up nearby. I believe they are brought up from Texas.

Interesting Drake. The house I bought says 'for Mason bees' on the label. But it's less than 3.5" deep. Hmmm.

Not from there but the Dakota's & Montana have many local bee operations. If I'm not mistaken Dakota North produces more honey then any other state. Not saying some don't come from texas but just saying.
https://www.agweb.com/article/north-dakota-produces-most-honey-in-nation/

Seems everybody is jumping into the "Bee House" business but keep in mind all the "bird" houses ones see on the market. Some are well designed homes to aid birds in their nesting based on science and study. Other are not only just decorations but death traps to birds that do nest in them. I have raised mason bees for a few years now for my hobby orchard as local and wild honey bees are in drastic decline. Much less work than honey bees and FREE. You can make a very good house from scrap wood and reeds. But the many species of native bees are suffering from declining habitat and insecticides. There is a second "silent spring" building from the use of neonicotinoids will shadow DDT. I'm not anti- AG but we need to make sure our practices are sustainable and not just profitable.

I collect, like many others, my mason bee cocoons in the fall from my houses and store them protected till spring to let them hatch when the orchard blooms.

I guess I will have to look into modifying my new bee house. I don't want to create a trap.

Drake, how do you store them, like you mentioned? Inside or another way?

Most bee keepers here are out of FL they run bees here in the summer then run them down South in the winter months, just can't figure why they put them so close to the roads to get creamed by passing cars.

Anyone have pictures of their bee houses?

Good write up Drakej.
bumblebees actually prefer to make their nest in meadow vole grass chambers nesting material. What was pictured is a queen in the apple blossom.
Many of the native leaf cutter bees and solitary bees use different medium to make their nest.
All the ones that pollinate my early flowering Nanking cherrys are a ground tunnel nester so they need undisturbed soil from year to year.
I will try to post pics later.
The cereal hype about bees has made some good and some bad news spin, but has helped put research moneys into monitoring the species of bees out there. In Manitoba they have recorded 20+ new species records that were not known before.
Some species even make their chambers in grass stems, so when Big blue stem grass was wiped out when the prairies were opened up, Who knows how many species have been expired

Corrigated cardboard rolled up with the open chamber facing out are the most used SUCESSFULLY, it has to be protected from getting wet, and stored from the winter elements, and let on their own for the bees to emerge in the spring. The larvae are genetically sycronized to emerge last first and first last in the chambers. That way they do not eat each other leaving the chambers.

One should look at Jim Gibb's video on Dandeloins and Spring honey bees useage.

Sorry, been away. I am having my best luck with 7-9" lengths of hollow stemmed Phragmites grass(that about as long as anything I have found between growth nodes, stem must be unobstructed front to back) as close to 5/16" diameter hollow. I collect those that I can't see thru and split them carefully and remove cocoons in late Sept. Then clean those that look alive and store dry, ventilated boxes that will fit into used women nylons for insect protection than in 1/4" hardware cloth box for rodent protection and winter in my unheated garage till spring warmup than I put them in my fur freezer(not usually full that time of year) till a couple of weeks before first orchard blooms start move them to refrig till good weather and bloom starts. Transfer them to individual hatching boxes(small wood ones with 3/8 hole for them to exit) which I place in or near each box. My "house" designs vary greatly as I am still experimenting.

If you don't have MB's in your area(but you might be surprised if you put out a house as they are easy to not notice) you can put out "trap" houses were you think they might be and relocate them easily(just takes a season to do it). Areas of lots of natural spring blooming plants will most often have them. They are native.

Some of the best info I have found on mason bees is from the website of Hutchings Bee Services.

My backyard is full of Blue Scillia flowers and they bloom before anything else up north here. Nanking cherry is 10 days later and Apples are 16 days after Scillia

Drake- Thanks for the info. Just so I understand...these 'trap' houses you mention (like in my prior photo) are actually more detremental than they are good?

They have got you interested . Now you can go to the next level.
Your lucky it was only 10 bucks, normally the garden centers charge 25 skins...........there is something about women and spending money when shopping, Expensive " it has to be good"

This year has been amazing for clover in my neck of the woods.

Two of the beekeepers near me lost all their bees with our last tough winder, plus we had a flood in January with the rain on the snow and ice and one had 2 hives washed away. Their new bees are really making honey right now with all the blooming that is going on. Came a bit later this year so I hope the bees get set up for winter.

Bryce

As I understand the research mason bees fill the outer 4" of hole with male only chambers(as they are more expendable to predation) so unless holes are deeper you have provided shelter for a one sex generation. Females live the longest and do almost all the pollinating. A single male can fertilize several females so Most want to raise as many females as possible. The challenge is a house that provides approximate 5/16" holes 6-14" deep that can be kept disease free, give access to remove cocooned larvae if wanted, weather and predator protected with dense enough material around hollow to deter parasites, cheap and easy to make for DIYer's. Lots of designs being tried out there, commercial and DIY. I like the Hutchings wood tray design(and made a couple) but they aren't being used yet by far as well as the natural reed ones, also have some paper straw ones. As I only have 8 houses out in different locations my testing is not that scientific(with a house of each style in all 8 places). It could be the location of houses that is better reason for usage. All my houses near or on large structures(buildings, south side) are the highest used so far. Have one house that has never been used and one just a couple of tubes. Now that I have built up are pretty good population MB's I am going to move around a few houses next year to experiment.. Sadly I have a limited source of the 7-9" sections of reed grass at 5/16" dia that has been working the best. Not enough to use them in all 8 houses. P.S. Cutting the dry reeds works best using a Dremel tool and cutoff wheel as it doesn't "crush" them, even a razor blade doesn't work as well for me. One thing I am doing to help keep parasitic wasps from going into gaps between tubes(they are very small) and attacking thru reed walls is filling that gap with cheap $1. caulk within the outer one inch of reeds(like mason cement between blocks. In a house with wood bottom, side, back and removable over size top that is screwed on. This lets me lay in rows or reeds fill gap at front, lay next row, fill, all the way till full than seal on top. The Hutchings design also provides this important protection I just have to see if I can get them to use them at my orchard.

My apple tree this year looked wonderful , just covered with blossoms. I have one apple on it today.

I noticed very few bees working it. I have been considering getting some bees, but after reading this thread I think I will just do more to promote more mason bees.

Thanks for the info Drake.

Ttt.

here are some of my nanking cherries


one of the most important things about Solitary Bees is to have where they are tunneling their burrows not to dig them in the fall and destroy their tunnels.

I love my bees and I love the Cherry jelly now

Bountiful harvest.

10 gallons if I picked them all on two shrubs.
Don't worry about the apple tree production it does usually follow a two year cycle.

Overnight temps of 40f do sterilize the male flowers in apples when they come out.

Are butterflies good pollinators too?

I'll bet those were wood bees, they look kinda like bumble bees but don't sting. Any old barn or shed around here will have them.

Apparently air hoses, airguns, and any small tubes around the shop seem work for the bees around here.

Cant drive 10 feet down the highway here without creaming a butterfly on windshield or grill. Seems like an unusually high population here this summer.
Jim

Butterflies, moths, flies and many many species of solitary bees all have their place, species of flowers and time of year in the complex web of pollination. And things like neonicotinoides inseticides really throw a wrench into it. Overspraying herbicides also eliminates the "trash" flowering weeds That keep our pollinators alive the rest of the year we don't think we need them.

Do you use butterfly houses?