Hello.
We have been busy with carpentry tools, making nest boxes for some very small flying friends.
As spring arrived, you may have noticed something looking like a small
dark bumblebee. This is a mason bee.
Unlike honey bees,
they are solitary; every female is fertile and makes her own nest.
Solitary bees produce
neither honey nor beeswax, but they are excellent pollinators, and
since they have no honey to defend, will only sting if squeezed or
stepped on. As such, they make excellent garden and allotment "pets",
since they both
pollinate the plants and are safe for children and pets.
The females like to nest in narrow holes or tubes, such as hollow
twigs, but sometimes other similar spaces are used,
including empty snail shells, old nail holes, or, as we have made for
ours, bespoke mason bee nest boxes. A female might inspect several potential
nests
before settling in, and within minutes of putting ours up, there were
several mason bees flying around and in and out of the holes.
Once mating has occurred, and suitable holes found, females then visit flowers to gather pollen and nectar, and it will
take many trips to gather enough. Once sufficient, the bee backs into the hole and lays an egg
on top of the mass. Then she creates a partition of "mud", which
doubles as the back of the next cell. The process continues until she
has filled the cavity. Female-destined eggs are laid in the back of the
nest, and male eggs towards the front.
Once a bee has finished with a nest, she plugs the entrance to the
tube, and then may seek out another nest location, so we've made sure
there are plenty of choices up at our allotment.
We began with some plain old blocks of wood,
which Rick then drilled holes into. These were the first ones, and the first ever time using the drill.
These we screwed to the end of a compost bin on brackets.
But as his confidence grew, so did his ambition:
Until finally he was designing 'luxury' homes for our useful little friends:
A simple project, but fun, and worthwhile in terms of potential benefit to our crops. Within minutes of the first nest going up, we saw mason bees nosing around, and now we can see a lot of activity as they make their trips to and fro.
Bye for now,
Eleanor.
Lol Love him!