I have a fun, simple project for you this week, and it will most likely
cost you nothing, take you just a few minutes to make, and will create
habitat for garden pollinators. It’s also an enjoyable way to observe
nature at work. With a little pile of scrap wood, we made a few mason bee
houses for our garden and yard, and a few to give as gifts as well.
Mason bees are small, cute, fuzzy little bees that make
efficient pollinators in the garden. They can be blue-green, or
dark-colored like the one pictured above. This little lady is not the
first to make a nest in this hole in our unfinished door frame.
The female mason bee gathers nectar and pollen and stashes it in the
back of the hole until there is a sufficient food store for her young.
Once there is enough food to supply the larvae, she lays an egg on the food store and then
seals it in with a bit of mud. She then brings in more pollen and
nectar in front of the previous mud layer, lays another egg, covers it
with more mud, and stacks like so until the cavity is full. Once the
cavity is full, she seals the hole with a final layer of mud. Maybe you
have seen these mud filled holes and wondered what was in there.
Here is a link to more information on mason bees, if you are interested in learning more –
http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/inse006/inse006.htm. I think these little bees are pretty fascinating!
We have an endless supply of scrap wood from our various home
projects and are always looking for functional ways to use it up. We
cleaned up some sections of 4×4, cut an angle at the top to accommodate a
little sloped roof, and then drilled 1/4 inch diameter holes in the outer rows
and 3/16″ holes down the center. We used all the depth we had in this
case, and drilled almost to the back of the 4×4. Typically, larger
diameter holes are recommended (5/16″), but maybe our bees here on the
coast are pretty small, or maybe they actually prefer smaller than the
recommendation. The hole in the door frame is about 1/8 inch, for
example.
We used sections of old fence pickets for the roof (not totally
necessary, but shelter from rain is nice, right?) and as a backing to
make mounting it easy.
Apparently, it is best to hang the house facing east or southeast,
for morning sun. The face of that door frame above is pretty much dead
south, so a little variation from that recommendation probably won’t
break the deal.
I'm looking forward to observing these bees more closely. We really enjoy creating habitat for beneficial species of all kinds at our place.
How do you invite beneficial insects to your garden?
