Solitary Bees

The day before the BFD, a few items I ordered for taking care of solitary bees arrived at my house....but, it sat on the kitchen table until today.

I got a bunch of cardboard tubes to try to use instead of the plastic nesting block I had been previously using for attracting Mason Bees.

I found that the product I was previously using didn't really attract mason bees (but I did get other types of solitary bees, so I'm ok with that). Primarily, though, was hard to protect against predation of the developing bee larvae during the late summer, which is why I decided to try a new product...and they were a pita to clean between seasons. The new cardboard tubes I'm trying should make things a lot easier.

For those that aren't familiar with solitary bees....they tend not to sting (yea, they will if you accidentally squish them) since they're not guarding a community nest, and they can pollinate many times more flowers than honeybees. They nest in tubes, canes, stems found in nature. They create chambers in the tube made out of mud (or leaves), pack in a wad of pollen, and lay an egg. That chamber gets sealed, and the next one filled.

Here's the products I'm going to try this year....they also have a lot of great info on their page.

http://crownbees.com/

Anyone else doing this?

This sounds pretty cool. Is there any risk of other types of animals taking up residence in the tubes or.....say wasps???


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Usually just other pollinators. And I've seen spiders sometimes.


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K, cool. I gotta read up on this.


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Many years ago I took a thick piece of wood, hastily drilled random holes in it as deep as my drill bit would go (not deep), hung it up on the S side of my house. I don't think it has ever attracted anything. That's what I get for not following specs!
Did also put up a bat house. It didn't fill with bats either...

My neighbor's slope gets tons of those burrowing bees. Swarms of them hover around. I suppose they make good pollinators too? I still get a kick out of petting bumble bees...

Are they the same as carpenter bees? If so, all you need is a pressure treated fence - LOL - that's were they burrow at my house.

although, carpenter bees ARE solitary bees....they're not generally encouraged.

Bumble bees, on the other hand....you can build them some pretty cool bee houses.

We get ground dwelling bees. Every year they nest in a different place and there will be hundreds of holes about 3 to 5 inches apart.

Two years in a row we had the European hornet (Vespa crabro) which is the largest eusocial wasp in Europe and the largest vespine in North America. The first year it nested in a rock pile, the second it nested in a large crack at ground level in a big tree. I do not think it is a pollinator. But it also was not aggressive, not that I ever poked the nest to see what happens. We also get yellow jackets which are nasty. Run over the nest with foot or lawn mower and watch out for a concerted attack. The nest in holes made by voles/mice/moles.

We have solitary bees too, though spiders seem to prefer the little houses I put out, which is fine, spiders are welcome too. Does anyone keep honeybees? We have one hive in the backyard.

I always thought having a hive would be so neat. Maybe once we are old(er) and don't travel and move so much...

Some counties in the area have programs in place to help homeowners get started.


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my father used to keep a couple hives in our backyard.