Day 7: Some success, some failure

 


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 coming in and out. And green bee butts at night!
 

Bee box 4: at least semi-success! I’ll have to go back to the original pix to see which are tubes the bees came out of, and which they might be using to lay eggs.

 

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