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["Jerry Mills" <millsapl@fgi.net>]

Orchard mason bees AKA blue orchard bees are excellent pollinators.  I have
three boxes of them for 30 acres of fruit.  I put them in a refrigerator in
the winter to keep them safe and put them out at the beginning of
apple/peach blossom time. (They have help from other local pollinator
insects.)   Mine live in reeds which they seem to prefer over holes drilled
in wood.  The reeds have to be at least six inches long and will contain six
or more compartments..  The first, or front, three larva will be males. They
will have pupated sometime during the previous year but do not emerge until
the following spring.   The males emerge first and are ready to give the
last three bees a loving reception since they are females.  After mating the
females immediately beginning  preparing a reed for young.  Pollen and
nectar is collected and placed at the back end of the reed.  Then an egg is
laid on the food pile and the section is walled off.  The process is
repeated until the entire reed is filled. By the end of six weeks or so the
process is finished and the adults die.  The eggs/larva/pupa/bees live in
the reeds until the next spring before they come out and repeat the cycle.

Since they don't live too long I put them out for my fruit trees.  If blue
berries bloom at a much different time it might be prudent to keep them
refrigerated until just before the blueberries bloom.  I have tried holding
some until pumpkins bloom but cannot say the experiment was successful or
not.

  Dale C.Nelson, E-mail Address:  nielson@osmia.com, can sell you bees and
reeds.  I got mine several years age and find they are easy to manage. They
were a good investment. They come with a note of exactly how many males and
females are in the reeds.

 

Orchard mason bees  are 3/4 the size of honey bees and have a deep blue abdomen.  I agree the things in shotgun shells may be mud daubers

Jerry Mills.  Southern Illinois, west of heaven