Easy to locate info about keeping mason bees online.

Start here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=keep+mason+bees+in+zone+6+site%3Aedu&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

I don't know if there is a formal title for such people. I simply consider myself a gardener who focuses on providing habitat for as many beneficial pollinators as I can. I plant many native plants/shrubs/trees, as well as non-natives that are safe for the environment but provide nectar to supplement what is available from the natives. I avoid chemicals and try to be a good steward of water. It would be helpful to have a label. When people ask me about my hobbies, it takes quite a mouthful to explain my activities.

martha

This year, I was watching the pollinators of my sneezeweeds (native plant), and pretty much exclusively it was small metallic green bees. One of these days I have to see if I can research their lifecycle, I found I know almost nothing about any bees but honey, bumble, and carpenter bees. I know we have a lot more species of bees, but no idea how many.

Dbarron,

Another thread had a post from someone more knowledgeable than me, and they gave a conservative estimate of 4000 types of bees in North America and 30,000 types worldwide. So, you have your work cut out for you, if you want to claim to know something about every single one. Good luck.

Martha

If you focus on one species of solitary bee (usually a type of mason bee) then it's really a part-time job. You have two bursts of activity, largely just a couple of hours of work. 1) siting the house and putting it out in the spring, then monitoring the release/hatch of your bees. They live, they do their thing, and they die, and you have a house full of mudded-over tubes that doesn't do anything. In the fall, the best practice is to harvest them to extract the good cocoons from anything undesireable. You clean the cocoons, the house, and you put the bee cocoons in cold storage, and that is' it. I say "I keep bees" but it's kind of half-hearted, because it's way less work than honeybees. Beekeeper generally = honeybees, and anything else requires a lot of explaining. But forget that, it's still fun no matter what you call it. :-)

So are mason bees in the garden only in the spring and bumblebees out all summer?

Carol

Generally, yes.

There are a lot of bee species that are called "mason bees" and they are each active at different times in summer, but they have all in common is that they're "solitary bees" where each female is on their own for emerging and reproducing. Only life cycle per year occurs, and each bee lives for a few weeks only, so it's a short burst of activity.

Bumblebees, on the other hand, are a colony. At a high level, the queen lays eggs and the workers help raise successive broods over the course of the season (~5 weeks from egg to adult) so there are new bees being born throughout the summer. Those multiple waves of bees mean pollination to happens over a longer period of time.

That's interesting. I didn't know that.

Could you answer my question that I just asked in a new thread? It's about ants. I have a lot of ants, and I have an attitude of live and let live. They love to go on my rose bushes (50 in pots). So how do I protect bees from ants. I'm wanting to get mason bees (and a housing system) or make a bumble bee home. But I'm thinking the ants will harm the bees. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Thanks very much. I don't know how to provide a link to my thread. :)

Carol

Hi Carol, I'm afraid I don't know much about ants, sorry!

If the ants are all over your rosebushes, it's likely that they are seeking aphid honeydew--nothing to do with bees. And if you start trying to kill one insect species but not another, that's a slippery slope that rarely ends well for bees.

Let's say you're talking about protecting nests or hives or colonies . . .

Once mason bees have finished nesting, it's a good idea to protect the tubes/trays/house by putting the entire thing into in a fine mesh bag.

For bumblebee colony boxes, BeeDiverse has some creative solutions for protecting them https://crownbees.com/media/wysiwyg/Bee-Mail/June_2014_Bee-Mail.pdf

I haven't ever experienced ant problems, so I don't have much advice to offer, but I wish you luck!

Thanks! That was VERY helpful!! That was exactly what I needed to know.

Carol