For some reason the Mason Bees are active at Condo #2. I would say there were 4 tubes active. However, there is no activity on Condo #1.
So far I have only seen bees occupying paper tubes. No activity has yet been seen for the bamboo tubes.
Lots of rain today. Temperature about 45 degrees F. So it is not surprising I see no activity this afternoon.
All day it rained. Chance for little activity. Although the temperature was 45, it felt even colder.
😊
Bees flying around and loading up tubes.
Only condo#2 was being visited, but the bees were flying in a virtual swarm around condo#2.
I checked the cocoon bad cache and noticed at least 5 cocoons were opened.
Weather has been in the high 60s today. I expect tomorrow will be a big day for bees.
I plan on setting out a bucket of wet white clay tomorrow.
Again an inspection of mason bee condos and adjacent walls showed no bees: Nary a single solitary one.
Not only have the mason bees not emerged, but I have not seen a single bumble bee. By now there should be a few flying around. There is concern among entomologists that there may be a problem. We will see.
Still to cold for mason bees. No activity. Local forecasts seem to indicate more days where there are not enough days above 50 degrees F for another week or so.
Mason bees are just waiting.
Daffodils, Winter Daffne are all in bloom
The bees have ignored the glorious Pi day. Here it is March 15 and not a single bee is buzzing the condos or walls of the house.
Maybe they are partying at some other person's bee condos. In any case, they are not doing anything at mine. I checked the cocoon cache. No activity is occurring.
Once again, careful inspection revealed no bees anywhere in the yard, on walls or on mason bee condo.
High temperature approached 60 degrees F, so I thought today would be the day. Tomorrow is Pi day (3.14) so maybe the bees are waiting for their favorite day.
I checked both of the condos today. I also checked the cocoon bag. No bees emerged today.
I examined the mason bee condos very carefully. No activity was found. And no bees were on any walls.
I have a couple pieces of black plastic on the south wall but neither piece attracted any bees. (Black is quite warm in the sun, so it should be a good spot for a mason bee to rest.)
No bees seen today. No tubes filled today, No cocoons seen to be broken today.
All in all, a day of no action
It appears that daily high temps will be above 50 for nearly every day in March. Bees should soon be quite active.
Cool temperature, rain and a good dose of hail. Bees must have just kept hunkered down. Did not see any today.
The temperature was certainly over 50 degrees F today
but I saw no bee activity. I guess the first couple of bees were trail blazers. By March 14, I expect some real activity.
No bees on the walls. Peaking of temperature just above 50 is not quite good enough for most bees. Just about another week and we will see acceptable temperatures consistently above 50
Cool but not cold, but no bees. I checked out condo 2 but there was no further activity. I will keep an eye on the first tube which had activity. I suppose it is just a bit too low on the temperature scale.
In any case, no bees are on the walls. I will check in the afternoon.
Condos are made with light, thin pine wood. I line the back of the condo with paper-covered Styrofoam(1 large sheet at one dollar at Dollar store). This allows the tubes to be easily removed in October. Also I take pieces of the Styrofoam and remove the paper, then I use the bare Styrofoam to cover the roof to keep the tubes dry during rain.
I use two kinds of materials for tubes. Black bamboo needs to be cut and shaped to get the maximum number of bamboo tubes into the condo. A special set of cutters is needed to shape the bamboo. The other material is white paper.
The cocoon cache is made from 6 things.
1. Large plastic candy jar
2. pillow bag (like a white screen)
3. 1/4 inch hardware cloth
4. milk bottle carrier
5. aluminum pie pan
6. large heavy rock
Please see the broken cocoon. So far I have only found two broken cocoons and only seen two bees.(Although some small insects were seen high on a wall, I could not be sure they were mason bees.) I assume my bees have found some tubes in nature . Hard to believe all the bees used only my condos.
So here is a view of one of the cocoons which have had an emerged bees.
I observed no bee activity in the yard or near the condos. The high today was 54. Bees want a few more degrees.
There is a reason why my mason bees are working.
List of flowers, currently in bloom
1. Winter Daphne 3 large bushes
2. Daffodil (miniature and standard size) about 2 dozen
3. Primrose one large plant
4. Hellebore (lenten rose) two large plants
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Plants which may bloom in next 4 weeks
1. Blueberries 10 bushes
2. Asian Pears 3 trees
I was sorting though the cocoons (very gently) when I came across a cocoon which looked a bit shriveled. I thought I would peel off the shell a inspect.
So I carefully peeled off the shell. Soon I discovered that the contents did appear to be an insect. So (thinking it was some sort of parasite) I peeled off the entire shell. Lo and behold a mason bee emerged.
I gave the bee the name Matilda because the bee was large which is a main characteristic of a female. I photographed her but she was a bit camera shy and she flew away (a good sign she is healthy). Basically, as soon as she was completely recovered from her ordeal of emerging from the cocoon, she took to the air. The photo shown is the best of the three photos which she "sat for" . Note that Matilda is not the bee in the video of the previous post. The name of the mason bee in the video is Bertha.
Upon inspecting the south wall of the house where condo 2 is mounted, I saw her on the window frame.
I observed two other bees which were quite small. Both were sitting high up on the wall, so I could not be sure they were mason bees. If they were mason bees, they would be males. I am giving the males the names Alex and George(family names). Of course, I couldn't tell you which is which.
1st egg laying
Today just after noon, I was observing Condo 2 which is on the south wall of the house. On the tenth row of tubes from the bottom on the right hand side of the condo I noticed the very first activity of the season.
Please see video which is included in this post. Incidentally, I examined the cocoon cache and noticed one broken open cocoon. I also noticed three shriveled cocoons (which indicates a parasite), I opened the shriveled cocoons and discovered nasty larvae of some nasty parasite. I smashed them with a rock.
See attached video of Seasons First Female laying eggs.
According to weather forecasts every day from now on will be a high of at least 50 F. I will accept the forecast and say by March 6 which should be seeing bees.
I will try to take photos of the first mason bees.
Stay tuned.
I checked the cocoons and found not a single cocoon has emerged. And the tubes are all empty. I will be keeping an eye on the tubes.
Temperature seems to hover just under 50 during mid day.
The mid day temperatures should be slightly over 50 for a few days to encourage the bees to emerge.
No tubes active yet. I checked the cocoon bad and no
cocoons have been broken. I keep the cocoons in a bag
which allows air flow. So far, the cocoons look like they are in good shape.
It is way too cold for bees. If we see a few days over 49 degrees , we might see a bee or two. But with February weather, no bees.
February 4, 2021
No bees yet. Not that I expect any, but there is always a possibility of a strange occurrence.
I removed the bag of cocoons from the north side of the shed. I positioned them so escape is extremely easy, yet totally protected from rain.
If none of the cocoons survive I will, of course, be disappointed. The condos will then need to be populated by natural populations. This is possible. I will keep an eye on the cocoons and see if an emergence occurs.
No bees yet. I am keeping my eye on the condos.
I plan to photograph the first emergence.
This one is just a freebie from a web site.I used crayola white pottery clay to plug the ends of paper tubes. I plan to buy a large amount to provide females with clay for the cocoons.
No bees yet. I am checking the condos every day. While I realize the bees usually do not show up until late February, I am just checking to be sure.
The white tubes are rolled paper. The other tubes are cut from black bamboo. Each tube is from 4 to 5 inches long. All tubes are blocked at the inner end.
The roofs of the bee condos are 1/8 inch styrofoam.
Condo north has a few tubes which are loosely tossed into the upper room (three vertical lines at top of condo)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am building two kinds of tubes.
1. paper tubes which are made from 8.5x11 white paper,
each piece of paper makes 2 tubes. Most tubes are made on a 5/16 inch dowels. Elmer's white glue is used in small amounts to make the paper stick together. One end of the tube is plugged with white clay.
2. bamboo tubes are cut to about 5 inches long. If the tube has no node, then one end is plugged with the white clay.
I plan to fix more bamboo tubes. The second to last step will be to install the tubes and the last step is mounting the condos on the wall.
Mason Bee rebuild process
I took both of my mason bee condos and cleaned them up. I pulled out old staples and nailed everything. I have some thin styrofoam which is sandwiched between layers of thin paper. I put the styrofoam on the condos so that the tubes will be protected from the rain. I have found it is important to soak the panels in water. It only takes a few minutes, then I remove the paper. You have to remove the paper, otherwise in the weather the paper warps the foam. Just get rid of the paper.
The bottom of one condo had many black spots. I took it off and soaked it in diluted bleach for about 20 minutes. Then I rinsed it off under running water. I put it next to an heating system air vent to dry it.
In a day or so, I will attached the dried bottom to the condo.
I have many tubes completed. As soon as the condos are complete, I will install the tubes.
Ok the bottom is now attached to the bee condo. I need to make more tubes so that I can fill up the condos.
I timed my tube construction so that each tube takes a total of about one minute. That includes cutting paper, rolling paper (while gluing), taping each end and finally plugging one end with clay.
So when I set down to make tubes I figure an hour will produce about 60 tubes.
Starting yesterday, I have been making tubes. I use two sizes of dowels, quarter inch and 5/16 inch. I use good ole'fashion computer paper. I have made about 80 tubes, so far. I don't worry about the exact number of tubes of each size. It is about half of each size.
After rolling a tube using elmer's glue I finish with two or three pieces of masking tape to secure the flap.
I bought a 2.5 lb tub of white modeling clay at Walmart. It cost a few cents over 5 dollars. It is essential to seal one end of each tube. According to the label, the clay drys slowly. So after three months the tubes will be ready. If I have completed all tubes by first of January, the clay will have plenty of drying time prior to March 15 (Pi day). Pi day is the day most mason bees recognize as the beginning of the mason bees life cycle.
Soon I will begin cutting and shaving the bamboo tubes.
It is essential to have a good supply of black bamboo tubes because mason bees prefer black bamboo tubes to all other types of tubes.
Early in the spring of 2021 I will move my bees from their winter storage into this quarter-inch hardware cloth box. I will put it near the prepared condo. The box will protect the bees from birds.The bag is opened but the overhang from the house protects the bees from rain.
Mason bee cocoons shown drying after the rinse.
I am not going to try to count these cocoons but I estimate about 250 . Notice the large objects on right side of the paper. These are the deepest section of a bamboo tube. It is extremely difficult to remove a cocoon from this woody material, so I leave it along. The deep section only includes one cocoon.
I love spell checkers, because I am such a lousy speller. So I never won a spelling bee. Turns out winning spelling bees is worthless.
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This is a cocoon secured into the very back of a bamboo tube. While sometimes the parasites can attack this position, the location is typically extreemly safe for the cocoon. So safe that it is even difficult for me to remove the cocoon.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.
Some good cocoons and some destroyed. No in betweens.
Either alive or dead. The white worms (larvae) are BAD news
Basically, I just split the tube at the end and pry it open. Actually, very simple to accomplish.
The only real problem is when a cocoon is stuck in the very back of the tube. That one can be difficult to extract. It only occurs for about 1 in 50 cocoons. The
big problem is parasitic wasp and fly larvae. The parasites actually destroy cocoons.
Above is an example of an empty tube.
Above is an example of a destroyed cocoon. I suspect it is some kind of fungus.
The nasty little Houdini fly maggots do not know what is coming. Tomorrow they get eliminated from the bee-condos. I am sure it is better to kill the Houdini fly now as compared to waiting until they emerge in the spring.
I plan to run my movie camera as I remove the mason bee cocoons from the bee-condos.
You will see the cocoons which have been destroyed and the cells which have been hijacked by Houdini flies.
Because of the recent invasion of Houdini flies I expect to be smashing plenty of the little white maggots.
After I have harvested the mason bee cocoons my next task will be to cut black bamboo tubes and make the white paper tubes. I have wooden dowels which are sized to the mason bee desires.
Finally, I will reconstruct the bee-condos.
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.ðŸ˜
I am no fan of the routed-wood-trays.
Ok it is now Sept 25, in a few more days it will be
demolition time for the mason bee condos. I will
mix up a batch of bleach (very diluted) and water and
wash my cocoons. I will be separating out the parasites and put those babies away for the winter.
Once I have the cocoons put away I will start the process of cutting bamboo and rolling paper tubes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6781997/Giant-killer-hornet-believed-new-species-largest-world.html
Next spring I will carefully monitor the release of bees and will kill the nasty Houdini flies. I really hate those nasty files.
She hated it. They want BAMBOO tubes. I will only provide paper and bamboo tubes for 2021.
