This year I loaded the condos with quite a few more tubes due to my better packing technique. Each tube is touched with silicone caulking to keep it in place. Each condo has a large overhanging roof. The roof material is styrofoam.
I ash-canned all the routed wood trays. I have used the routed wood trays for two years and I never got even one cocoon. The idea of the routed wood tray sounds great and might work for some people. But my bees tell me that they will look elsewhere for breeding accommodations.
The routed wood trays take up a huge amount of condo space. I would never use them again, not even if I acquired them as a gift.
I have become quite skilled at rolling white paper tubes. At 2 per minute, it only took a few sessions to produce enough to fill the condos. About a third of the space has been used by black bamboo tubes. Trimming the bamboo tubes does require a little more skill. The base of the bamboo can be no larger than the rest of the tube. I found a few extra large bamboo tubes so I installed white paper tubes into the bamboo. Should be interesting to see how the bees react to the bamboo filled with paper.
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