Mason Bees are one of the most misunderstood friends in the garden.
Mason Bees nest in 3⁄8” (.95 cm) tubes like the ones found in the new Mark’s Choice® Mason Bee House. All you do is mount the house out of the wind, about 6 1⁄2 feet high (2 m), and clean it out with a drill once a year. Place mason bee houses as close as possible to plants that will benefit from pollination.
The female mason bee enters a nesting cell head first to regurgitate nectar, then backs out, turns around, and backs in to deposit pollen. The last load for the cell is nectar only, to which she attaches the egg. The egg hatches in about one week. There are five larval stages, and the second stage is when the pollen wad is used for food. The developing larva will cocoon in the fifth stage and pupate in late summer. Then it takes about a month to meta-morphose into an adult bee, which will hibernate until the following spring.
The female mason bee allows about 3⁄4” (1.9 cm) of the hole for the new bee to develop, at which point she constructs a mud wall to seal the chamber — thus the name ‘mason’ bee. Then she starts collecting pollen and nectar for the next egg. She continues this procedure until the hole is filled. In her lifetime, a female mason bee can lay 30 to 35 eggs. The female mason bee is very wise; she lays the females at the back of the hole and the males towards the front. In the event of predator attacks the males are sacrificed first, hopefully leaving the females to reproduce the next year.
In the spring, the males emerge first and wait for the females to leave the nest, generally a few days later. Shortly after mating, the female gets to work gathering pollen for the next generation of mason bees. The male mason bees also visit flowers but only to get nectar for their own consumption.
Mason bee houses should be cleaned after the adult bees emerge in the spring by reaming the nesting cavity in the nesting box with a 3⁄8” (.95 cm) drill bit. You will know the bees have emerged from the tubes when the mud plug is gone.
Mason Bee House
