Mason Bee Chronicles

  May 11 Bees win, ants lose! The mason bees are busy in Box 1 up top. There aren’t as many ants crawling in the box and tubes but the bees are doing their thing anyway. Box 2 has 2 more tubes filled. At least a few more bees are finding it since I moved it. Busy! The bees in this box are doing their own thing, I won’t be harvesting this box of reeds (since I can’t remove them), so I’ll just put the whole box inside again this winter.  

  April 28 2024 Bee box 1 up top. I thought it was inactive. But wait! there's at least one tube filled! Maybe the bees are sidestepping the ants after all!  Bee box 2 - now in the cottonwood grove, 2 tubes already filled! And more have pollen flecks in them   Bee Box 3 - busy bees! Bee Box 4 - definitely filling tubes here! Some pollen particles in some  

  April 25 2024 Box 1 above - still looks like no further activity, and still ants crawling around in it Box 2 - zero activity, no bees, no mud, no pollen, so I moved it to the cottonwood grove, on an ant-less trunk, close to the black box #3   Box 3 - lots going on! I tried to get a big spider out but it crawled into a tube! Also I politely shoved a caterpillar out into the grass Box 4   

  April 15 2024 Bee box 1 (above): fail! Ants took over the box. I had seen some activity, the start of pollen and mud by some of the tubes, but always there were ants crawling around. Today, no more activity. Empty tubes. Ants still everywhere. Hopefully the ants just ate pollen/eggs, and no bees! Also no green bee butts at night. Hopefully the bees moved to different boxes. Last year this box had ants, but the bees still filled around 20 tubes.  Bee box 2: fail! You’d think this lovely SE-facing box with a bit of shade cover might be perfect, but I did not have any success last year with leaf cutter bees in this box in this spot either. And in fact in the last couple of days during a big wind storm, the container with the cocoons had blown out. Hopefully all had hatched that were going to hatch, but, zero activity in these tubes. So I will move the box into the cottonwood grove (near box 3 and 4, on a trunk that has no ants!)     Bee box 3: success! Activity in the tubes, a few bees

April 11 2024 By the evening of Day 1, a couple of bees had hatched. End of Day 2, several more in each of the boxes.  Box 4 with the un-removable tubes, a couple of tubes had the mud chewed out, so some of those bees have emerged! Today, Day 3, I watched a few emerge in the black box #3. Above is a video of it! Fun! Proud of my bees and that I didn't kill them over-winter! haha.

April 9 2024 We just ended a very cold and wet (!) week, it shouldn't freeze anymore, and it probably won't rain till October again. Temps will be in the 40s to 70s this week (average daytime temps need for mason bees to start emerging is 55*), and although I have, like, only 5 daffodils that have bloomed, by the time the bees emerge they may find enough weed flowers, or possibly cottonwood trees?? to get to work pollinating, because I swear last year all they had was weeds. I do have 15+ fruit tree saplings, but I reckon they'll take years to bee useful. So here's the first day of setting out the bee boxes with tubes and the cocoons! Fingers crossed.   Box 1     Box 2   Box 3     Box 4, the one with un-removable tubes. I did put this house inside during the winter but that's it.