I went through all my bee boards that my Mason Bees used to reproduce last year. The result was hundreds if not thousands of bee cocoons. This is something unique to the Mason Bee, as they do not have a hive. They are solitary meaning every female bee is a queen. During the early spring they emerge from these cocoons, usually the males first. And then the females emerge and start collecting pollen, making homes out of mud and laying larva. Eventually those larva spin silk and encase themselves in a cocoon. So that is where we are now, with complete cocoons with bees inside. Though extracting them from the homes as been quite the work in progress over the years. I started off using a crude method of 2x4 blocks with holes drilled in them. I moved onto using bamboo reeds and finally a wood plank that has grooves routed into it.
Once processed I have just the Mason bee cocoons, both the smaller male ones and the larger female ones.
The boards filled with bee cocoons are stored in plastic totes, this is to keep parasitic wasps away the best we can. They do not seal completely and a few get in, but it stops alot of them.
I taped up the boxes as they are not air tight the tape helps to trap the wasps as they attempt to penetrate the totes.
Last year I did not give them such protection and I lost alot of the cocoons to these wasps. Glad they had to fight their way inside this year. Next time I hope to have even better boxes that will allow none of them to get in. Though pollen mites will still be a problem, though the process I am showing in this post takes care of them.
Inside my plastic totes sit my bee boards, they have been in there since spring time. The Mason Bees are only active from late February through April. After that I place the bee boards in the totes so predators like the wasps do not get to them, or at least not so easily.
Here is what the bee boards look inside, this was a very lightly used board. As many of them have every channel filled to the top with cocoons.
I make sure to wear a face mask when doing this as pollen gets lifted up in the air and causes my sinuses to act up. I am allergic to the seasonal pollen they collect, so opening the homes makes my spring allergies flare up all over again. Giving me a runny nose, itchy throat and just feeling crappy. The mask helps alot keeping most of it out. Though my big ol beard makes it a little less effective.
As I open the trays I scrape the mud homes into a five gallon bucket. Eventually I have a bucket filled about a quarter of the way full of pollen, wasps, mites, mud and cocoons.
Next is to separate the mud homes from the cocoons. When the Mason Bee larva spins the cocoon it is water proof and will float. Though if a parasitic wasp penetrates their cocoon and lays wasp larva inside they will sink due to the hole. This is exactly what we want, only the healthy in tact bee cocoons. I use distilled water and a plastic tray, two 1 gallon bottles are used.
I pour the five gallon bucket of nesting material and such in the tray of water.
We use a Spearmint essential oil to kill mites and the wasp larva. It does not harm the intact bees. About ten drops was used for the 2 gallons of water.
I mix it all up and make sure every cocoon gets soaked in the water and essential oil mix.
Most of them are floating, thats good meaning the wasps had a hard time getting to the cocoons this year due to the plastic totes used.
I stir for about ten minutes and make sure to work it all around to free up the cocoons from the mud.
Its quite messy so you need a good setup to clean then, glad I had these trays around.
Straining out the cocoons after the ten minutes.
Carefully only skimming the top so you do not pick up the fallen cocoons.
I then take my cocoons to my bath tub and rinse them out real good using a colander.
Using milk crates and window screening I have a place for the cocoons to dry out.
Since I have so many cocoons I use four crates to dry them all.
They stack and I can use two fans to fry out four cases of cocoons.
We can see them through the handles and openings, they will go from a dark brown wet to a lighter brown when dry.
These fans work great and I run them for about twelve hours. Rotating the trays about six hours in, so each get alot of air flow. Otherwise the bottom tray will dry a little slower than the top ones.
Checking back later we can see the dried cocoons, they are now ready for storage. It is important to keep them in a temperature controlled place. Otherwise they may emerge prematurely when their environment around them gets above 55F for too long. That can happen with warm snaps if kept in the garage, you may find a bunch emerging and then killed as soon as the temperatures plunge again.
I move them around and make sure they are all dried out.
Using some old vegetable bags they offer good ventilation.
Each bag has hundreds of cocoons, and have a little heft to it. Its funny holding bags full of bees. Though its completely safe, they are dormant and would take many days to even start emerging.
I store my Mason Bee cocoons in our refrigerator. And take them out once spring is starting to kick in. Probably around late February or March where I live.
Kinda funny keeping bees in my fridge I must say, though I wont have them there for too long so its okay. They get their own shelf.
The garage has bee boards all over the place now. I pile of them were infested with pollen mites so I need to wash them. Luckily the mites will not affect my bees as I cleaned them using the Spearmint oil so they should emerge clean and happy.
In the next month I will be keeping a close eye on the weather, waiting for it to warm up. Then I will use some 3D printed incubation chambers to spawn them. Will do an update post on that when it happens.