Recap of my mason bee management

 I started managing mason bees in the spring of 2018.

By the fall, I discovered no bees filled tubes in the mason bee house which I provided.  Early in spring of 2019 I purchased a few tubes of mason bees. By the end of(October) 2019 I counted about 75 cocoons.

This year I started with my harvested bag of bees(75).  Now my population has grown to approximately 250 cocoons. Of course, I do not know how many of the cocoons are viable. They look viable, but I have no way of know if any disease or parasite has invaded the cocoons.

This winter I will rebuild my mason bee condos and maybe add one condo.  I should put out about 300 tubes. We will see the results at the end of 2021 season.

So far I have cleaned up the houses. I intend to do some structural repair and I will soak the condos in a rather stong solution of water and bleach. I figure that will virtually steralize the wood.

I have a fairly large crop of black bamboo. If I run out of black bamboo tubes, I will fill in the remainder of the space with hand crafted paper tubes.  Since bees seem to like variable size holes, I will make sure I provide a variety of sizes.