Native bees

Who doesn't love bees!

You have may have heard that in the last few years honey bees have suffered a catastrophic drop in numbers due to what is called colony collapse disorder. There are probably multiple causes for this major decline in honeybees including pesticide use, mites and fungal infections. As honey bees are the main pollinators for fruits, nuts and vegetables this is a very bad thing.

Lucky for us they are not the only pollinators out there. There are over 4000 types of native bees known in the US ( honey bees are not native, they were brought from Europe). There are two types of non nesting bees,  ground nesting and cavity nesting - I'm going to focus on the cavity nesters.

The orchard mason bees is a cavity nester. They can be blue, green or black and are slightly smaller then a honey bee. Female bees live solitary and make their nest in hollow reads or abandoned insect holes in wood. They lay their eggs and add pollen and nectar, creating individual cell for each egg. Then they take off and leave the bee babies to fend for them self. These native bees can fly at cooler temperatures then honey bees which helps to pollinate early flower crops like apples and blueberries.

orchard mason bee

You can help some of these native bees by providing nesting boxes in your garden. My garden gets lots of mason bees as well as a ridiculously large bumble bee type that nest in my bee box. This guy looks too heavy to fly, when I am working in the garden and one comes by you would think a humming bird went by your ear.

Nesting boxes for cavity bees are pretty easy to make you can find direction here. 

They are also pretty easy to buy which is what I did from  here or here .

.

bee homes

Within a month of putting this box up there was no more room at the inn, all the holes were taken- it was quite interesting to watch them come in and out some actually widened the holes and if you looked in you could see their little bee buts sticking out kicking sawdust out on the plants below. I took some great pictures this summer but can't find them but this is what they look like.

bee bums

So if you have any plants you want pollinated or if like me you think this kind of thing is cool, this is a great time of year to start thinking about adding a bee box to your yard.