The Solitary Bees and a Handful of mice

Part one: Solitary Bees.

We are all familiar with Honey bees and dearly love and respect them for their industriousness,  complicated and fascinating hive life, their comforting buzzing presence in our gardens, and last but not least, their HONEY. The honey bee is not a native to America but was transported by English Colonists in 1638.

 

 But there are other bees, equally interesting, and actually more productive as pollinators than honey bees. These are N. America's wild bees, our native bees. I am speaking of Solitary Bees, friends you may like to introduce into your own garden. Amazingly, there may be over 30 thousand species of Solitary bees pollinating our world! Meet the Orchard Mason Bee, a gentle little bee that doesn't even sting.

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(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
 I first learned of these bees when I purchased a mason bee house at a country fair, and proceeded to learn all that I could about them from this little book, " The Orchard Mason Bee", by Brian L Griffin.

  Mason Bees and other solitary bees such as leaf cutter bees, bumble bees, capenter bees, and  onion bees do not produce honey nor beeswax. In the Mason bee world, all females are fertile and build their own nest inside natural tubular cavities such as hollow twigs, previously occupied beetle holes, or bored in tree stumps. You CAN also provide these bees with ready made homes, as do many gardeners.

 The female  Mason Orchard Bee chooses her own personal tube and then flits from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar. When she has a nice "basketful" she backs into the tube, depositing the goods, and laying an egg atop the nutritional mass. She then builds a partition of mud and leaves the tube to collect more nectar, continuing the process until the tube is filled with eggs. All the female eggs are laid in the back of the tube, the males towards the front. The mother bee then blocks the tube with a mud door and goes on the find another "tube" in which to lay more eggs.

In Spring, the young bees begin to emerge from the holes as they chew through the mud daubing. The males emerge first and hover around the openings waiting for the females to venture forth. The males will mate them and then die...alas, Mother Nature can be rather sad sometimes

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 Because solitary bees have no Hive, Queen or Honey to protect, they are docile little creatures just going about their business and in so doing, pollinating nearly1600 flowers per day, as opposed to the honey bee, who visits about 700 flowers a day, pollinating only 5% of them.

 You can easily attract Mason bees to your garden by providing them with one of the many ready made bee houses available, or you can make your own bee house with a block of wood and a drill or a handful of bamboo.
DIRECTIONS for building a bee house ABOUND ON YOU TUBE.
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I purchased the above bee house is on Amazon. It is rather cute with a basket weave exterior. You can find any style to suit your garden, take a look!
 I purchased these paper mason bee tubes from "Crown Bees".
 I plan to place them securely in an old bird feeder for next years "bee nursery"

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Fellow blogger, artist and nature lover, Tammie, has built a wonderful Mason Bee house, check it out here: 
http://beautyflows.blogspot.com/search?q=mason+bee

 Although I've had a bar bee hive for 4 years (for honey bees), I have never actually FILLED it with honey bees because it seems like such a hassle to raise honey bees, and frankly, I am not all that interested in collecting honey, I just want the pollination for my garden.

 That is why I love the Solitary bees; they are so easy, so natural and they do a marvelous job in the garden; besides,they are very interesting little people.

 One day I will fill my honey bee hive, but for now, I am happy to have the Solitary Bees flitting amongst the blooms.

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Part 2: A mystery structure

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James is building something special here at the top of my slope with the wattle fence. I wonder if anyone can possibly guess what this will turn out to be? Not what you think, I bet! Take a guess, and I will show you next week when it is completed.

Many are guessing this is to be a swing... it would make a great swing, but it is not.

I will give you a hint, it is actually something for the BEES and the Birds.

Part 3: Mousies!

and little rats too.

I've been busy making rodents this week.

These little rodents will be looking for new mouse holes in which to dwell...

They will be up for adoption soon on this blog.