Flowers in bloom, no bees yet

 Ok, so the total number of flowers in my yard, front and back are as follows:

 Winter daphne (Only buds, no flowers)

 Prim rose     (a few flowers blooming)

 Heleoburus    (a few flowers blooming)

 Camellia japonica  (full bloom)

 Blueberries   (buds, no flowers)

 Asian pears   (buds, no flowers)

The winter daphne are really only buds which are not in full bloom. It looks like all four plants will be full bloom in a two weeks.

I cannot imagine the bees arriving until mid March, but

who knows?

no action today but I do have flowers , so I am watching for action including the Christmas Rose Helleborus niger

 Of course, the mason bees were not active today.
Not surprising because there are not any flowers out.
The winter flower Helleborus is almost in bloom.  The Camilla japonica
has been in full bloom for a couple weeks.  So I suppose if any mason bees are flying around wild, then my condos are available for them. We will see.  I will try to photograph any bees which show up. 

Christmas Rose Helleborus niger is quite a flower. The plant does not waste time with leaves at this time of year.Most of the plant is just flowers. I have never witnessed a bee actually visiting the flower but it sure is an early flower and just maybe I will catch a glimpse of one this January or February.

Note

Niger is actually referred to the color of the roots, not the white or pink flowers

Jan 13, 2021 All tubes completed and installed. Both mason bee condos are well seated on the house walls.

 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.

On January 12 I mounted the condos

 I know I am a bit early this year.  However, I mounted the mason bee condos on January 12, 2021.

Late in the evening January 12 a storm started. During the night high winds and heavy rain continued.

I was concerned that the bad weather would damage the condos. When I examined the condos late morning on January 13 I was happy to see no damage occurred.

Now I will keep watch to see if any wild mason bees nest.  Since mason bees can emerge as early as mid February, I intend to hold off releasing my bees until mid March.  In fact, I may not allow my bees to be free.   It may be a benefit to avoid parasites which may have invaded my bees.

Tube making continues and by end of today, I have completed all tube making

 Both mason bee condos are in the process of tube loading.  One condo is totally full and the other is about 3/4ths full.  I am  using a combination of hand made paper tubes and freshly cut black bamboo.

I never reuse bamboo tubes.  If a bamboo tube was not used by the bees last year, then I discard it. I assume there was something wrong with it.

This year I carefully cut the node end so that it is not wider then the rest of the tube.  

I calculate it takes me about 30 seconds to make one paper tube.  So that an hour of tube making results in approximately 120 tubes. The final step in paper tube making is to plug one end with white clay.  Some of the bamboo tubes are not cut at a node so I also plug each one with the white clay.

I am putting a small amount of silicone caulking on the end of each tube as it is loaded into the mason bee condo.

This year I may mount the mason bee condos outside much earlier than last year.  The highly beneficial climate change may allow the bees to start their work earlier. I do not want to limit their access to tubes.

Even though the bees may not begin until pI day, aka Einstein's birthday and circa Julius Caesar's murder, I still plan to mount the condos before the end of January.

At this point I have all the tubes ready. As soon as I get them loaded, I intend to mouth the condos. I have been doing this for 3 years. I think I have a pretty good handle on bee storage, tube construction and mason be condo preparation and mounting.  

I think I may prepare a few glass bottles and load some tubes. I intend to use dark glass wine bottles.