![]() Here are some tips for getting the mason bee house hung just right: Sometimes people worry about them causing damage to their homes by nesting in existing holes and cracks, but they don’t cause any damage while nesting. Filling the holes with mud to make them safe and snug for laying eggs, mason bees will need a small patch of exposed dirt in your yard if you’d like them to nest successfully in your garden. Mason bees most often nest in wood, using holes created by other insects and birds or even old nails they don’t drill into wood themselves. It’s important that you remove or thoroughly clean your mason bee houses every two years to avoid pathogen build up and even mold, especially if you live in a humid area. However, with proper maintenance, providing mason bee houses shouldn’t harm their populations and could even increase the population within the first two years that you place the houses in your garden. This can make them flighty guests in your garden, because they don’t necessarily return to nest in the place they were hatched. Being solitary bees, they don’t have honey bees’ homing instinct, which tells them to return back to a colonized hive. If you’d like mason bees to be present in your garden in the largest numbers possible, thereby providing the maximum amount of pollination for your orchard and garden, you can also create nesting sites for them.įrom what I’ve researched, providing mason bee houses doesn’t necessarily increase the numbers of mason bees in your area permanently. Having as close to a year-round food source for pollinators (pollen and nectar producing plants like flowers and herbs) will be of enormous benefit to the bees and butterflies. If you want to simply encourage mason bees and other pollinators in your garden, you can do so by planting pollinator-friendly plants. ![]() (Well, the males don’t sting and the females rarely do and only under extreme duress.) They’re efficient pollinators in the garden and orchard, even considered to be more efficient than honey bees. Mason bees range in size but are typically about half the size of a honey bee, and they don’t sting, so they’re an uncomplicated beneficial insect to invite into the garden. What Is A Mason Bee? Line Sabroe/Flickrįrom the genus Osmia, of the family Megachilidae, mason bees are usually black or metallic blue-green, though sometimes very brightly colored. ![]() This year, make mom a mason bee house to encourage these small, effective pollinators to visit your garden that may already be full of the floral offerings of Mother’s Days past. Giving mom flowers on Mother’s Day is great, but what if you gave her a little something extra to go with that bouquet Moms love flowers, but so do bees-and bees make the garden and the world a happy, healthy place by pollinating so many of our food crops.
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