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Over the holidays, we have been busy assembling our new Mason Bee Home Kit. It is a nifty product and will be a very popular item for children in schools and in the home. Besides the pieces that make up the home, there is enough paper in the kit for making 20 nesting tubes. This will get the child started. If they decide to make more nesting tubes, newspaper or Kraft paper can be used to make more nesting tubes. It will be fun to see how children will decorate their mason bee homes. Please send in your photos of completed homes that are decorated and ready for the garden. I am looking forward to seeing the art.
Click on the link below to see the Kit. Scroll to the last item in the Category
I am continuously on the lookout for items that might be of interest to mason bee enthusiasts.
We have just added a Mason Bee Home kit to our line of Beediverse products.
The neat thing is that it assembles without nails or glue! It includes instructions on how to roll your own paper nesting tubes. This is an awesome product. Another big advantage to this home is that it ships flat. Savings in shipping is significant.
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| Kit- Mason Bee Home |
This is the perfect item for people who like to put things together. A great school project!
Once assembled, the Bee home can be set out on an east facing wall, in a sunny location and under an overhang. It houses 40 mason bees and is ready to pollinate your fruit trees.
The kit includes pre-cut wooden bee box, mounting nails, sand paper, pre-cut Kraft paper for 40 bee tubes, dowel for rolling bee tubes, and tape for taping bee tubes.
This home is big enough to fit a Quicklock nesting tray with 30 holes and with room to spare for additional nesting tubes or a release shelter.
Instructions include how to assemble the bee home and how to roll your own bee nesting tubes.
5. Petri dishes are stackable and occupy very little space.
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| Stack of petri dishes with cocoons inside a manual defrost fridge. |
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| A thermometer is an important tool to make sure the temperature is right for keeping cocoons under hibernating conditions. In late Jan temperature is lowered to between 2-4C or 35-39F |
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| Always keep a container of water inside the fridge. This is an easy way to make sure that humidity is above 60%. |
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| Label each petri dish. |
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| In a manual defrost fridge, there is a freezer compartment that will require defrosting each year. |
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| In spring, the occasional male will emerge even though temperatures are low. |
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| For spring emergence, cocoons can be placed into Starter cottages or Emergence Cottages. These can be temporarily stored in the fridge, until weather conditions are reasonable. |
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| Store cocoons inside Petri dishes that may contain parasitic wasps. Place on kitchen counter in spring. If any bees emerge they can be released. Parasitic wasps can be destroyed by freezing . |
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| Variation in hand-crafted Limited Edition Scoops |
For a bit of fun, Randy took a photo while he was grinding a scoop at the grinding wheel. What is interesting about all this is that hard metal creates lots of sparks, like in this photo, and softer metals create very few sparks. Great photo Randy!
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| Sparks come-a-flying off high quality metal while Randy is grinding the metal down to form a scoop. |
This little mason bee Osmia californica, emerges soon after the early spring mason bee Osmia lignaria. We have supplies of Osmia californica available for our customers Click here for ordering your mason bees.
This little bee uses smaller nesting holes and has chewed leaf material as its nest plug. It will double the pollination season for your garden. Each bee nests and pollinates for about a month.Click here for more details about Osmia Californica
