Many of you have read about our three days spent at the Home Orchard Society Fruit Tree Pruning class. One of the things we took home from the class, other than the new-found knowledge of correctly pruning our fruit trees, was Mason Bees. We have had them stored in the fridge for the last month waiting for the weather to warm up enough to put out their little houses, and yesterday we decided it was time.

Mason Bees are a common species of bee that make little compartments of mud inside existing insect holes usually in trees, logs, sticks, etc. The species of our bees are Blue Orchard Mason Bee, Osmia lignaria propinquaThe Mason Bees are great for pollinating, but unlike honey bees they live alone and every female makes her own nest, commonly referred to as a nesting tube. This makes them much easier to care for as there is no hive to manage. We just put little Mason Bee homes out and when they emerge in spring they will mate and the females will occupy the tubes we provided close by. The male Mason Bees die shortly after; how nice.

The female Mason Bee has a stinger but will not sting unless she is squeezed, while the male Mason Bee does not have a stinger at all. Mason Bees also don’t share the same diseases and parasites that honey bees do, which is great because it sure seems like those poor honeybees are having a hard time these last few years. Another wonderful characteristic is the Mason Bees land directly on the flower stigma, while honey bees typically land on the petal. This make Mason Bees more effective pollinators. You go little Mason Bees!!

When we ordered our bees, we got a handful of tubes with Mason Bees hibernating in them, and then we purchased a lot of empty tubes to build the rest of the Mason Bee home. By doing this we are adding nesting tubes for the growing colony of bees we are expecting, God willing.

Here it is below,

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We took the little cardboard tubes, which were 12″ long, and folded them in half. We then inserted these into the PVC pipe half way in, adding as many as we could until they were all packed in there nice and tight. We then repeated the same process on the other end of the PVC pipe. So, this PVC Mason Bee home has potential nesting spots on both ends of the pipe. As you can see, the pipe was cut at an angle to provide a little roof over the opening to their home. If you look closely you can see the tubes in the bottom left are plugged with mud; these are the tubes containing the hibernating Mason Bees.

Here are the cardboard tubes we inserted in to the PVC home, before and after folding.

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Hopefully we will start to see the Mason Bees emerging soon and doing their magic in our orchard.

Have a great day,

Michael