What are Mason Bees?

Mason Bees

Mason Bees are active during the spring and or summer, and during the winter they hibernate waiting out the cold winter to emerge the flowing spring. Immediately after emerging from their cocoons, they mate and the cycle begins again. The overwintering period, allows us to harvest cocoons from their nests, examine and clean them to make sure we only sell healthy cocoons.

Beediverse sells mason bees in small cardboard packages in sets of 10 -plus a few extra. It is easy to set this box adjacent to nesting material.

Notes on availability of cocoons. Usually, cocoons are harvested from October to December and are available to stores immediately after harvest. When cocoons are NOT available in stores set out a home for mason bees. This will likely attract mason bees and set up a little colony by itself. For example, if a nest is set out in Seattle, WA there is a good 75% chance that mason bees will nest in the home. The reason is that there are mason bees in the area because many gardeners have mason bees in this city.

Spring Mason bees
We have two species of spring mason bee cocoons available for this season. We have an early spring species Osmia lignaria and one species that comes out in late spring about 3-4 weeks later Osmia californica (ONLY IN USA). This is a nice overlap and extends the pollinating season from early spring to late spring.

Both species use the larger nesting tunnels of the spring mason bee houses and spring mason bee nesting materials.

Summer Mason bees
Hundreds of smaller summer mason bees exist in North America and will nest in Beediverse summer homes and nesting materials.

Other native species abound in our gardens. Set our a nest and wait for the bees to arrive.