Mason bee season has started

With our local calendar showing warm weather ahead, I removed my solitary bee cocoons from the refrigerator and placed them on trays outside. For the next few weeks they will thaw out and become active, chewing their way out of these spun cocoons. With thousands of these little bean sized homes a single bee will emerge from each. First the males, and then the females a week or so later. Unlike honey bees they produce their homes on their own, and are much more docile than honey bees. If anything they are kind of clumsy bumping into you as they fly by. Not worried about it as they have never stung me. I hope to attract one on my finger this year with some sugar water, as it really seems they are quite the laid back insect.

I have already seen wild male Mason bees flying around, so figured it was time to release the ones I harvested.

Reusing one of my trays from the previous year, all that yellow stuff on the container is from the previous spawning.

All of these cocoons have been cleaned and processed, giving them the best chance at survival.

I am reusing some incubation chambers that Hive account@whangster79 made for me with his 3D printer.

With their hatch open we can see the cocoons inside, I try not to pack them too tight as I worry some bees wont be able to get out. So they are all loosely placed in these chambers.

All that yellow stuff is from the tree pollen, it can get quite heavy here in the South.

Hopefully in a week or two I should start seeing signs of activity, or just empty cocoons when they leave without me noticing. The males will fly around for a week and once the females emerge they will mate. The males will die off and just the females remain, all of them being queens they start building homes and seeding them with larva.

I have removed the large cubby box this year as I found the bees were mudding to the sides of the enclosure making it hard to remove the bee boards.

As of right now not much is flowering the bees tend to like. Though a few are active such as the lenten rose, leatherleaf mahonia and a few others. By the time my harvested bees thaw out and start emerging I think the cherry trees, apple trees and blueberry bushes should be flowering as well. My peach tree is already flowering so it will feed the wild Mason bees until mine hatch.

Seeing all these cocoons its pretty amazing how effective my bee boards are, the ease of removing the cocoons makes all the wood work worth while.

What used to take me all day now just takes about 2 hours to harvest all the cocoons, and with four years of experience with them I am constantly finding better ways to raise them.

I will keep an eye on the trays, though I expect at least a week will pass before any updates on them. Those bees are quite chilled being in the refrigerator for the last month or two.