Menards sale on mason bee hives

[H20fwler]

Menards has the mason bee houses marked way down right now just thought I would give you all a heads up. They are definitely not the best out there but are way better than nothing and fun to mess with and see them get used, they also have combo mason/leaf cutter bee ones.
I put one up early last spring in the orchard and it actually got used about ten of the tubes got capped off, this type needs cleaned out good every couple of years and that is easy to do. They also need attached solid to wherever you put them, racoons and squirrels sometimes get curious. I've got three out now.

Mason bees are outstanding pollinators and very friendly hard working little bees.

 

[Bill Loser]

Do you just screw them to a tree and let the bee's find them?
What do you mean by clean them.out?

 

[H20fwler]

Do you just screw them to a tree and let the bee's find them?
What do you mean by clean them.out?

Yep,
I try to put them fairly close to old an firewood stack or some type of dead tree is always great place. You can also buy the bee cocoons if you don't think any cutters or masons are in your area already.

Every two years the tubes need to be taken out and cleaned to discourage mites and small wasps. You use a drill bit to remove junk in tubes then slosh them around in water/bleach mix, then put it all back together and let the bees do their thing. Mites can be a really bad thing for them if houses don't ever get cleaned.

 

[Bill Loser]

Thanks for the info. I may try that tbis year. Always need more pollinators.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

I try to put them fairly close to old an firewood stack

I have mason bees for the last 5 or 6 years at home here, and as H20 said, they found my sheltered firewood stacks. In the spring every year, dozens of them hatch and start flying in and out of my firewood. I've had them land on me from face to feet - and they are NOT aggressive!! Being solitary bees, they have no hive to defend - so you have to try hard to get them to sting you. Even my wife isn't afraid of them. They fly even in light to moderate rain - honeybees don't. They're constantly in our home crab apple trees when in bloom. Great to have them around.

I bought more wood to build several mason bee houses for camp in the spring. Other solitary bees will use the houses along with mason bees. ALL GOOD.

Thanks for the info on mason bees, and bringing them to everyone's attention, H20!!!

 

[bwoods11]

Interesting idea !

 

[ruskbucks]

I believe a buckwheat patch should pull them in. I'm pretty sure when I planted my buckwheat plot that there were hundreds of them in the buckwheat. Is that possible, being solitary bees?

 

[Bowsnbucks]

I believe a buckwheat patch should pull them in. I'm pretty sure when I planted my buckwheat plot that there were hundreds of them in the buckwheat. Is that possible, being solitary bees?

Yes. Solitary only means they aren't in a community hive like honeybees. My wife has had dozens of them buzzing in her early flower pots on our patio, dozens in our crab trees - but they each have their own hole to call home = solitary.

 

[PoorSand]

I've been inside swarms of mason bees around my apple trees during blossom time and never had a problem with getting stung. I really like how much better pollinators they are than honeybees. I have noted that in the orchards around the farms where we have lots of mason bees that we also have a much higher percentage of blossoms that turn into apples.

I'm not so sure about buckwheat for them though. Around here, the mason bees have already packed their nests with cocoons and expired by the time the buckwheat flowers. The end of the lilac bloom seems to coincide with the end of their ephemeral existence. But buckwheat is great for other varieties of beneficial native bees around here.

Dragging a big old dead pine tree trunk with carpenter ant holes in it into an orchard has worked well for providing the mason bees with habitat they can bore nesting holes into, but for the price of these nesting houses from Menards, I am not going to go through that much work to help out the orchards that need more mason bees. I ordered four of the houses just now. The delivered cost, including tax, for four came to $36.82.

My understanding is that the houses should be placed at least three feet above ground level to deter ants, be angled slightly downward to encourage rain runoff, face south or east for early morning warm up when the cocoons hatch, and be covered with chicken wire if squirrels are a problem. For larger orchards, one nesting house every 200 feet seems about right to me. For the interior of an orchard that is over 100 feet from a nesting house, well then the ole dead log trick still holds. The log can be as short as a stick of firewood if need be.

My philosophy the past couple years, right or wrong, has been to start improving mason bee habitat shortly after planting new fruit trees when we plant wholesale orders of them. The bees aren’t needed until years later when the trees start blossoming, but when they do start blossoming, it is good to have already built up a large number of mason bees to get the job done.

I have been able to determine which orchards already have mason bees by getting out there during blossom time on a bright sunny day and then taking photos with my phone of the side of the tree that is in full sun. Most bees will be a blur because they are moving so quickly, but I get a few that are stationary just long enough to get a clear photo of them. Then I compare their photos with mason bee photos on the internet. As H2Oflwer mentioned, the cocoons are available for purchase online. I got some from Mason Bees for Sale one year and they all seemed to hatch.

 

[TreeDaddy]

I've been inside swarms of mason bees around my apple trees during blossom time and never had a problem with getting stung. I really like how much better pollinators they are than honeybees. I have noted that in the orchards around the farms where we have lots of mason bees that we also have a much higher percentage of blossoms that turn into apples.

I'm not so sure about buckwheat for them though. Around here, the mason bees have already packed their nests with cocoons and expired by the time the buckwheat flowers. The end of the lilac bloom seems to coincide with the end of their ephemeral existence. But buckwheat is great for other varieties of beneficial native bees around here.

Dragging a big old dead pine tree trunk with carpenter ant holes in it into an orchard has worked well for providing the mason bees with habitat they can bore nesting holes into, but for the price of these nesting houses from Menards, I am not going to go through that much work to help out the orchards that need more mason bees. I ordered four of the houses just now. The delivered cost, including tax, for four came to $36.82.

My understanding is that the houses should be placed at least three feet above ground level to deter ants, be angled slightly downward to encourage rain runoff, face south or east for early morning warm up when the cocoons hatch, and be covered with chicken wire if squirrels are a problem. For larger orchards, one nesting house every 200 feet seems about right to me. For the interior of an orchard that is over 100 feet from a nesting house, well then the ole dead log trick still holds. The log can be as short as a stick of firewood if need be.

My philosophy the past couple years, right or wrong, has been to start improving mason bee habitat shortly after planting new fruit trees when we plant wholesale orders of them. The bees aren’t needed until years later when the trees start blossoming, but when they do start blossoming, it is good to have already built up a large number of mason bees to get the job done.

I have been able to determine which orchards already have mason bees by getting out there during blossom time on a bright sunny day and then taking photos with my phone of the side of the tree that is in full sun. Most bees will be a blur because they are moving so quickly, but I get a few that are stationary just long enough to get a clear photo of them. Then I compare their photos with mason bee photos on the internet. As H2Oflwer mentioned, the cocoons are available for purchase online. I got some from Mason Bees for Sale one year and they all seemed to hatch.

informative post

I just ordered 4!

bill

 

[PoorSand]

The four that I ordered on Sunday arrived yesterday (Tuesday). As expected, the reeds are of many different diameters. The ones with 5/16" diameter holes should be good for mason bees. The others should be good for various other bee species.

I suppose there are around 200 reeds in each. I will probably color the ends of some of the reeds to help the bees navigate by landmarks when they start packing nests.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

PoorSand -
800 reeds ought to make a batch of bees happy. Good luck with them.

I'm doing my own wood block type houses with paper tube inserts.

 

[PoorSand]

I forgot to mention that a guy can put a mason bee house out when the frost goes out in spring by a crabapple tree that gets loaded every year and then come back to collect it during the summer. Then move it to the orchard you want it at for the following spring, with the completed nests inside. In general, that has worked for me, but a lesson I learned from doing that though is that when the bees hatch the following spring, they may never come back to the nesting house because something (clay, water, or sufficient blossoming plants at the right time) is missing. But that information gives a guy something to work on before he really needs the bees years later once the trees in the new orchard grow old enough to blossom.

 

[crowskee]

You guys will have to excuse my ignorance but are these the same bees I'm in constant battle with for eating holes in my log home?

 

[Bowsnbucks]

crowskee - NO. Those are probably carpenter bees. They look like bumble bees and make holes about 1/2" in diameter. "Sawdust" under the holes is easily seen. Mason bees don't CHEW holes into wood - they use holes already made by some other bugs or wasps - or people!! Mason bees won't use just any hole either. They go for holes right around 5/16" diameter (8MM metric). Mason bees are slightly smaller than honey bees and are dark colored. If you have those bigger, black bees that resemble bumble bees, and they hover like helicopters in the air - those are carpenter bees.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Poor sand -
You mentioned the problem of not having enough early-blooming flowers to feed mason bees at the right time until apple or crab trees bloom. For that very reason, we're planting a native wildflower patch of about 1/4 acre this spring at camp. They'll be perennials - so they come up every year, and there'll be some early blooming flowers in the mix to feed mason bees until the apple and crab trees bloom. I got our seed from Ernst Conservation Seed Co. in Meadville, Pa. They have seed mixes for just about ANY situation, including oil & gas pads, pipelines, powerlines, and loads of other wet-to-dry situations. If nothing else, Ernst's web-site has LOADS of info on seeds, plants, and their preferred habitats.

I read the beginning of an article that said you can put out sugar water for feed for mason bees too, but I never read the whole article. I don't know the details of that process, but you may want to look into it if you need early food for your bees.

 

[Chainsaw]

Thanks H2Fowler and other posters, ordered 3. Wouldn't have had a clue where to start.

 

[crowskee]

I like the idea of mason bees but would carpenter bees use the mason bee hive?
It would be great to have some hives in my orchard but being so close to my house I would hate to do anything to encourage more carpenter bees.

 

[H20fwler]

Just a heads up that most garden centers at the big box stores are putting mason bee boxes on sale now. I think winter is a great time to put them out so that they kind of weather in a little by spring.
Here are a few store boxes I put out that have gotten some good use.

I also watched a really good show on PBS or NatGeo about this guy in the UK that filmed some mason bees in his back yard garden all summer. Also showed a lot of different kind of leaf cutters and other cool bees that use similar hives.
He made his hives by drilling different size holes in old firewood logs and it worked great for him…so I made some up too. Will see how they work next summer.

 

[ruskbucks]

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Just a heads up that most garden centers at the big box stores are putting mason bee boxes on sale now. I think winter is a great time to put them out so that they kind of weather in a little by spring.
Here are a few store boxes I put out that have gotten some good use.

I also watched a really good show on PBS or NatGeo about this guy in the UK that filmed some mason bees in his back yard garden all summer. Also showed a lot of different kind of leaf cutters and other cool bees that use similar hives.
He made his hives by drilling different size holes in old firewood logs and it worked great for him…so I made some up too. Will see how they work next summer.

Looks like you have some good use. I bought one last year at tsc no sale for under $5. I put it on my shed next to my food plot. It was cool to see that they built in mine also.