'Tis a Bee's Life

It's the middle of April and my colonies of Mason Bees are as busy as...well...BEES!...lately. I stood out on the top step of the back porch gazing up at both of my bee houses this afternoon, marveling at the amount of bees swarming around me as they awaited their turns to claim a nesting tube. In fact, the wooden bee house I have is like the intersection at Times Square right now -- bees are actually pushing each other out of the way to get access to tubes! I called Kaitlin out to take a look a little while ago and it was she who pointed out to me that not only are they using the bee houses, they're even crawling up into the metal tubes on my wind chimes and nesting in those too! And into some of my tchotchkes I have nailed up onto porch columns. It seems anything that has some kind of opening is worthy of the bees' inspection, at least, as they were crawling in and out and around everything. Their instinctual drive to reproduce and carry on to another generation is simply amazing.

I think I've written about "my" Mason Bees around this time of year since I began blogging back in 2005. I believe it was that year, maybe the year before, that I happened across bee houses at a local Back Yard Bird Shop store I went to with my friend Lynette. I don't know what caused me to stop and look thru the literature that was displayed there. I hadn't heard yet about how our honey bees are dying at an epidemic rate each year...at such a rate that biologists and environmentalists and scientists are becoming terribly concerned. As we all know, honey bees are the main source of plant pollination in the world. If the bees die out, we die out. So it's deadly serious. Not yet aware of that, I guess it was the idea of harvesting bees that don't sting, bees that are prolific pollinators, caught my attention. Especially since I love to garden and some of the literature spoke of how these bees would help my flowers to grow! I like a challenge...it challenged me to buy one and see if I could attract any...and I left the store with one wooden bee house and a bunch of cardboard nesting tubes that are used to line each nesting hole.

I hung my bee house up towards the top of a southern-exposure porch column as I was instructed to do. And I began to wait. And watch. And wait some more. For several weeks, nothing. I almost gave up hope 'til one day I spotted a lone black bee perched inside the opening of one of the nesting tubes. Out of 36 holes, 3 were filled up and closed in with a muddy paste the bees make to seal off their nests. Hmmmmmmm. Not a roaring success, but a beginning.
The next year, about half of the holes were filled. Last year, all but 3. And I hung up another, a tubular shaped bee house about the size of a container tennis balls are sold in. Maybe 8 of those tubes were filled. But this year...this year both are almost filled to overflowing! As I stood on my top porch step, there must've been 50 bees swarming around me. But no fear...they do not sting and they're totally nonaggressive. They just want to be left alone to do their work. And they are hard workers, believe me.

Which prompted me to go online this evening and order another bee house. From Northwest Nature Shop in Ashland, Oregon, which seemed to have one of the best prices and is nearby...well, 3oo or so miles to the south of me, anyway...so it won't take long to get here. And when it arrives, if I'm not able to do any hammering yet, I'll get Dear Hubby or Kaitlin to hang it for me so the overflow of "my" bees can find a nesting place. And, once again, it prompted another post out of me to urge you to do your part, too, in helping this species of bee to thrive and to help out not only your fellow man but yourself as well. Because if bees die out, so do we. Remember that.