not many bees left this time of year

 I checked one tube of my mason bees and discovered only two viable cocoons. One area of the tube was chuck full of some nasty little white maggots. The tiny maggots could be the houdini fly maggots.  Houdini or not the pesky little white maggots got ground into mush.

In the next few days I will be going though both condos and saving the good mason bee cocoons for the spring.

Back in July, there had been two filled tubes in the routed wood trays. However, when I inspected today, I discovered they were all gone. Some nasty insect must have destroyed them.😠

I am no fan of the routed-wood-trays.