Our garden and orchard have suffered lately due to lack of pollinators but this may be the answer for us and major producers. A single leaf cutter or mason does the work of fifty honey bees and they are not effected by the mite that is decimating that population. https://masonbeesforsale.com
I love bees, they are vital. I think it would be wise however for humans to be prepared for a bee shortage in the future. If i were smart I'd develop solar autonomous pollinating drones.
Well in the real world our mason bees are doing great and filling nesting tubes with next year's offspring at an alarming rate. I'm going to have to order more tubes.
Great fun to watch them come and go from the bee house as they fill tubes with babies and pollen and finally cap it with mud. My wife's constantly seeing them at work in her garden and they are doing their job with gusto. I was worried about the local wasp and hornets killing theses docile bees but I have witnessed them attacking these predator wasp and hornets when they get around the bee house so it's going well. They are my pet bees.
No they just pollinate as they gather pollen to put in the tubes for their babies to feed on. It's all about pollination not honey.
I put two nest boxes in my garden two years ago and mason bees filled them, but then I caught them chewing up my green bean plants' leaves to stuff in their tubes. My green beans were all chewed up, so I eliminated the nest boxes. Problem solved.
Mason bees use mud, leaf cutters use leaves and they consume very small amounts to plug their tubes. Some other bug ate your leaves and it's unfortunate you blamed Mason bees and destroyed the colony.
Well, they looked like mason bees. Do you know of another bee-type insect that looks like mason bees? When I removed the nest boxes the damage suddenly stopped.
Correlation is not causation. Poor bees. This is a good comparable to the AGW hoax actually. Blame industrialization for climate change based on nothing but correlation and destroy an innocent in a knee jerk panic reaction.
Hey, listen this time. You are showing that your main focus is a desire to argue. There is no argument. I TOLD YOU that I saw bits of bean plant leaves stuffed in the tubes. I saw little black bees on the plants, chewing the leaves. I removed the nest boxes and the problem stopped. I asked for your conclusion and you attack with bullshit. And to do it you ignored the leaves stuffed in the tubes and then speculated. Just read those three statements of fact and if you have a relevant thought go ahead and tell me. But keep your bullshit to yourself.
Then you had leaf cutters bees not Mason bees and leaf cutters barely use any amount of leaf to close the end of the tubes so they were not your culprit.
That's better. And you may be right that they could have been leaf cutters. It looks like both nest in tubes and could be mistaken one for the other. "Megachilid genera are most commonly known as mason bees and leafcutter bees, reflecting the materials from which they build their nest cells (soil or leaves, respectively)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachilidae
My leaf cutters haven't emerged yet as it takes two weeks of consistent temperature over 70 degrees. I'm like an expectant father.
Your Cheap-Ass Bee House Is Probably Killing the Bees https://earther.gizmodo.com/your-cheap-ass-bee-house-is-probably-killing-the-bees-1835321883 --- Regular bee care, Purrington said, involves storing the larvae-filled nests that the bees make inside the bee houses safely for the winter, cleaning and sanitizing the nests after the larvae have grown and left in the spring, and cycling out those breathable woods and paper straws regularly to make sure they’re not harboring parasites or bacteria. He also said it’s a good idea to cover the houses with metal netting to keep the birds out, as woodpeckers and bluejays find bee houses to be great restaurants. Mader said that very small bee houses that don’t have too many rooms in them aren’t too bad. “Our general recommendation is to go small, not try to aggregate hundreds of bees in a small space, and to have fun with bee houses. If people want to try scaling up, they should educate themselves on the appropriate beekeeping systems for maintaining the health of their population. ---
As someone with severe allergies, honey is the sole reason I maintain a bee hive and extensive pollinator garden
