Easy DIY Mason bee nesting sites
What are Mason Bees?
It wasn’t until I was a full grown adult that I learned there were even such creatures as Mason Bees, or Carpenter Bees. When I was a kid I had a fear of Honeybees. To this day, don’t like honey Back then our neighbor had a hive and honeybees would visit the clover in the yard where I routinely played, and I would either step on them or stick my hand down on them, anger them in some way, get stung, and spend days swollen and itchy. Needless to say, my relationship with bees in general, up until recently, has been quite adversarial.
Fast forward to the modern day where I have discovered a colony of bees living in holes in a dry mud bank under a roof. I was fascinated to learn that not only are Mason Bees pretty darn harmless, they outperform honeybees when it comes to their important role in our eco-system. Mason bees are solitary, gentle,non-aggressive pollinators, who pose little harm to humans. They visit fruit and nut trees, some berries, and a few early spring flowers. A single mason bee will visit between 1,600 to 2,400 blossoms daily with a 95% pollination rate, whereas honeybees have a 5% pollination rate. That’s a 90% improvement on pollination and 100% improvement on fear! Though solitary, they will gather together in colonies for nesting.
Easy DIY Mason bee colony
Placement and maintenance are key to a thriving colony of efficient and productive mason bees. Often folks get giant hotels that they can’t maintain or ones that arn’t even maintainable, and the colony suffers. Well we discovered the perfect solution!
STEP 1. Eat a can of Pringles!
STEP 2. Cut the Pringles can in half.
Using the implement and technique of your choosing, cut the Pringles can in half, which is just below the word “original”
STEP 3. Stuff each side with as many appropriately sized hollow bamboo tubes as possible.
You could find your own, or try ours which are well suited for use in these DIY Mason Bee houses. Here at DomesticBamboo we recently starting offering natural 5 inch bamboo tubes for use in Mason Bee nesting colonies. Click here to learn more. Use hollow tubes about 5-6 inches long and stuff as many inside as you can, and keep stuffing until none of the tubes drop out when the can is turned over. It may require a bit of finagglin’, and some light taps with a mallet for the last few. Turns out to be about 25 of our Mason Bee tubes. At some point these will need to be removed and replaced so do not use any adhesive!
We use paracord and hang them about head-high off a southeast facing post under porch cover. An alternate to hanging them would be sitting them on a shelf and bungee cording, or even duct-taping them in place. Location is key and the ideal location needs sunshine, cover, and stability. Early sunshine heats up the colony and works sort of like coffee, gets the whole thing buzzing. A colony out in the rain and weather, well, that’s a buzz-kill. Mount it to something solid rather than leaving it to sway in the breeze. Imagine a long day out working, and coming home to your apartment complex and having to fly cleanly through your bedroom window to make it home. Now imagine that, if the entire apartment building is pitching and rolling. Make it easy and keep it flush against a wall or anchored in some fashion.
STEP 5. Inspect and maintain.
There are a number of issues that can befall a Mason Bee colony. Regular inspection and on-going maintenance are key to keeping your Mason Bee population thriving. We won’t go into the specifics here, so do your research. These Pringle cans though make it nice and easy. Solitary bees will need one end closed, which both ends of the Pringles can provides, so use hollow tubes, not the bamboo tubes with 1 end closed. For starters those won’t fit right, nor are they really cleanable and reusable if needed,. Tubes can be cleared, flushed with water and bleach and reused. Plus, they are easier to split when time comes for cocoon harvesting as the nodes give bamboo it's strength and are thicker, harder, and more difficult to split. Several Pringles can Mason Bee hotels could be hung together for a bigger colony.