I have many of the same fruits you are raising, except for huckleberries; but I also have European pears and apples. I am attempting to raise both honey bees and Japanese horn-faced orchard bees. It is my understanding that west coast orchard bees do not do well east of the Rockies.

Hey Charlie, I got my Hornfaced Mason bees fri. I built a covered box for them and secured it up on the fence. Ive been checking on them every day since and as of this morning havent seen any hatch yet. Got my fingers crossed! When they do hatch there will be plenty of blueberry flowers for them to feast on. I hope it works.

Here in N. VA they begin hatching after March 15. If you build a bee box with several different sizes of holes, you will see many of the holes will become populated, so there are probably many types of solotary bee that will take up residence if you build them a place. They will probably have hatching dates suitable to local weather. I suggest that you keep a number of bee boxes to encourage species native to your area to take up housekeeping. You will probably have more success.

I just planted some vegetables (tomatoes, peppers and zucchini) indoors and will be setting them outside in my garden in about 8 weeks.

Bee keeping and gardening are a lot of fun, if you like new things.

In these pictures I show my 2012 populated mason bee box with a carboard cover to discourage 2012 population of the box. In June I will clean it. I also show my 2012 empty mason bee box that I hope will be populated instead of the covered one.

This post was edited by CharlieBoring on Wed, Mar 20, 13 at 12:34

Second image.

Well after my first batch of Mason Bees failed I ordered more last week. I think I can claim success! Looking in the house this morning before the sun came up I saw 5 femal bees in the holes and a couple little males hanging out too. Today there was quite a bit of activity around the house. Males were buzzing by and femals going in and out of the holes. I think its going to work. Hopefully they will attract other native mason bees if I have some locally.

I'm in SoCal and have three citrus trees - one is a well established and sometimes very productive navel orange. The orange tree and meyer lemon are in full blossom right now and have bees all over - how can I tell if they are honey bees or mason bees? (there are lots of other fruit trees in the neighborhood) I am considering putting up a MB house.

Honey bees have two sets of wings; I believe the solitary bee (there are many types) have only one set.

Hmmmm, 50,000 honeybees in a hive. That's a lot of holes to drill if you're looking for an equivalent number of mason bees ; ).

This post was edited by Beach_bums on Sun, Feb 16, 14 at 14:25

Beach_Bums,
From the reading I've done, it sounds like Mason bees are more efficient pollinators than honey bees. Also, many of the bees in a honey bee hive aren't doing the work of pollinating. They are caring for the young and protecting the hive and maintaining temperature, etc. So, you wouldn't need nearly as many Mason bees as honey bees to do the same work, because Mason's don't have a hive to maintain and protect. For the same reason, Mason bees are very unlikely to sting--if they are even capable of stinging--because they don't have a protective instinct toward their larvae.

Martha

Beach Bum - Mason bees work when it is cold and wet; honey bees do not. The objective of a mason bee's visit to a flower is to gather pollen; a honey bee's collection of pollen is accidental. Honey bees become more fixated on a discovered nector source to the detriment of blooms that open later, leaving the later opening fruit tree under polinated. Mason Bees polinate about 20 to 25 times more flowers than a honey bee.

This is really great information, thanks! I built a windblock out of pallets around my fruit trees (40-50 in all) and wanted to mount nests for native bees.

I had honeybees here last year from a local beekeeper. They were fascinating. But I was shocked at how many native bees I saw. That got me really interested in encouraging the native population.

From what I understand I just need to protect the nests from rain and drill holes of varying sizes into wood blocks (untreated, of course). Do the wholes need to be drilled all the way through? Or how deep if not?

Any untreated wood will do except cedar. The holes need to be from 3 - 6 inches deep, but not all of the way through. If it is very cold in your area, I would cover the box in the winter with a cardboard box to give it a little more protection from the elements. Some people collect their boxes and place them in an unheated shed for the winter.

>>a honey bee's collection of pollen is accidentalNot so,..you sound like honey bees are worthless, pollen is needed, food for all bees to feed larvae.

Here, honey bee pollen picture showing MORE pollen is collected in spring to curb population,..LOTS of pollen needed!

{{gwi:427105}}

I took a really sturdy small pallet (my wood stove shipped on it) and started filling it with branches from trimming trees as well as a wood block we had around. Tomorrow we'll go on a scavenge hunt for more trunks and I'll pick up some wood blocks to fill the while thing in. When we're done I'll hang it near our orchard and put a roof over it!

Thanks again for an awesome post!

One more view of the bee house in progress.

Lilhouseontheprairie,
I assume you will drill holes in each of your pieces of wood? I've been wondering if it would be easy and still helpful to pile some of my old chunks of wood near the garden and drill holes in them. Does it matter which direction the holes are made in relation to the grain of the wood?

Martha

From my knowledge the holes need to be smooth and from 3 to 6 inches deep. The openings need to face south or southeast to be hit by the early morning sun. It is best to have the house at least 3 feet off of the ground; I do not know why, but my guess is to prevent plant interference and to have some protection from ants.

"Beach Bum - Mason bees work when it is cold and wet; honey bees do not. The objective of a mason bee's visit to a flower is to gather pollen; a honey bee's collection of pollen is accidental. Honey bees become more fixated on a discovered nector source to the detriment of blooms that open later, leaving the later opening fruit tree under polinated. Mason Bees polinate about 20 to 25 times more flowers than a honey bee."

Almost none of this is true.

Honey bees are very effective pollinators, which is why there is a multi-million dollar industry dragging around honey bee hives and plopping them in people's orchards.

The biggest issue that honeybees have as far as pollinators is they tend to work one crop at a time, whereas solitary bees tend to work more randomly.

Joppa - Have to disagree with you.

"Mason bees work when it is cold and wet; honey bees do not." True. Watch a hive on a early wet, cold morning.

"Honey bees become more fixated on a discovered nector source to the detriment of blooms that open later, leaving the later opening fruit tree under polinated." True, as indicated by your statement, "The biggest issue that honeybees have as far as pollinators is they tend to work one crop at a time, whereas solitary bees tend to work more randomly."

"Mason Bees polinate about 20 to 25 times more flowers than a honey bee." Many other individuals have stated similar information. An individual native bee will polinate many more blooms than an individual honey bee. If taling about a hive versus a native bee house, you would be correct.

Bees become fixated, when a nectar source opens, the bees concentrate on that source, becoming fixed on that and little else until the bloom period for that plant is over. If your blossoms open a few days after your neighbor’s blossoms, by the time your neighbor’s blossoms have finished, your blossoms are half over, and old blossoms do not pollinate well, if at all.

If your statement were true, nothing in my back yard except the orange tree and then the queen's wreath would be pollinated, because blooms are prolific and bloom periods overlap.

A certain proportion of the bees, the foragers, are always looking for the next good spot and recruiting other bees to come harvest what they have discovered. I have watched bees go from the creosote in full bloom to the bok choi blossoms a few feet away, and from the orange blossoms to the alyssum to the tomatillos. Those are foragers ... the ones waddling from orange blossom to orange blossom are the gatherers.

On any given collection run a gatherer bee usually stays with a certain kind of flower, but a forager's "waggle dance" can recruit that bee to a different resource for the next run.