North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["seth jones" <setjon@gmail.com>]

Hello Bill
I'm really not familiar with leaf cutters. With the osmia you can keep them from emerging by keeping them in cold storage till the right time of year. I have kept my tubes in the fridge in a paper bag (they do need to breathe) until a couple weeks before bloom. The little holes you are seeing are probably parasitic wasps which lay eggs on the dormant larvae. That could also explain why you had so many dead.
Hornfaced bees are very similar to Blue orchard bees, though not as widely used. I had success with them in zone 5 but I would over winter them beneath my garage which got just a little below freezing.
Now, if I could just find some I can afford...
Good luck
seth jones
zone5

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:57 AM, William C. Garthright <billg@inebraska.com> wrote:

> After building up a sizable japanese hornfaced bee colony only to have
> it devoured by barn swallows in a single season I'd like to start over
> either with hornfaced or blue orchard bees for my fruit trees.

In what part of the country do you live, Seth? I've been trying to raise
orchard bees for the past couple of years, but I'm having some problems
with it. Well, the first year, they all came out of their tubes just
fine in our extremely warm March, but then we had that hard April freeze
(some bees still survived, but I have no idea how, because there wasn't
anything blooming here for a long, long time).

Last spring, very few emerged from the tubes. Much later, when I finally
investigated, it appeared that the bees on the ends had died (I have no
idea why), and so the other bees couldn't get out. They'd apparently
tried to chew their way though the sides of the tubes, but none
succeeded. And of the bees that did colonize new tubes last year, there
are small holes in most of the plugs of mud at the ends, as if something
chewed its way inside - whether a predator, a parasite, or a smaller
bee, I don't know. (Note that this hadn't happened the year before.)

I've got tons of leaf-cutter bees - which *are* much smaller -
colonizing the tubes (although many of their leaf plugs at the ends were
also holed, by something, last year). However, they seem to emerge later
than the orchard bees, too late to pollinate some early blooming fruit
trees. I don't know if I should be trying to discourage the leaf-cutter
bees, or not. I'd like to have them around, but I'd rather have orchard
bees. (And I'm wondering if they are what has lately been chewing
through the plugs of the early bees.)

At any rate, I don't know anything about hornfaced bees. Are they even
suited to this climate? But it would be nice to get a variety of
solitary bees established, if possible.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
- W. C. Fields

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