Everything you need to know to host mason

Using gorgeous photos and videos we will teach you what a solitary bee is and why they are known as Mother Nature’s best pollinators and vital to our ecosystem.

What Are Solitary Bees? Unlike the social honey bees, solitary bees do not have a queen, do not live in a hive and do not produce honey. Without the need to protect a queen and honey, solitary bees are gentle, friendly and non-aggressive. Each female must find or create her own nest, and collect all of the food needed to feed herself and her eggs.

One of Nature’S Best Pollinators- Honey bees collect pollen on their back legs, whereas solitary bees are belly floppers. They flop onto blossoms collecting pollen all over their bodies. This enables them to pollinate 95% of the flowers they land on and they visit over 2,000 flowers a day. They truly are one of nature’s best pollinators.

How to Host: Our program makes it easy to become a solitary bee host. Gardeners purchase a bee kit that comes with house, nesting block, clay and bees. You release solitary bees into your yard and rent our nesting blocks for your bees. When you release the bees into your yard they will pollinate and enrich your habitat and ecosystem. Solitary means alone… by themselves. They don’t have a hive or queen to protect. Each female finds all her own food and all her own nests. They use pre-made holes in your environment and will lay babies in your yard and your nesting block. Harvesting and cleaning the cocoons and blocks is a critical step when hosting solitary bees to remove harmful predators. When you rent from us we take care of the maintenance and cleaning for you. You keep the black house and return the nesting blocks back to us. The following year, you will just need to reorder an “insert” with a sterilized nesting block and clean bees. Please watch our Fall Harvest Video below to see how we clean them.

Here are some of our favorite videos about solitary bees:
•PBS did a beautiful video on mason bees and how they build their nests – https://youtu.be/oPbH1YhsdP8
•Life Cycle of a Mason Bee – https://youtu.be/rbqnruwG6pA
•Mason Bee Tribute Video in macro lens and slow motion – https://youtu.be/JMbP7BIdYuo
•Inside a Mason & Leafcutter Block (the importance of why you need to harvest and clean… remove predators) https://youtu.be/oDNejgF-w5g
•Our Mason Bee Fall Harvest (why you Rent… we do all the cleaning) – https://youtu.be/wzDWeADhOno
•What Are Your Baby Bees Doing? Sneak a peak inside to see how mason bees develop. This is a 3 part series. Here’s number 1 https://youtu.be/Bgb_KVmcFLA

Birds & Blooms Magazine and Mother Earth News both published articles this month on solitary bees. In addition to all the above information, you’ll learn so much more reading this article in Mother Earth News: “Backyard Solitary Bees”

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