There are several beneficial insects to keep in your garden. Keeping butterflies, ladybugs, and various bees allow you to get more productivity out of your garden by ensuring all your plants are properly pollinated. By keeping a mason bee house, you ensure you keep these perfect pollinators are close by working hard for you.
Mason bees are native bees that can be found throughout the United States. They have a blue-black coloration and are smaller than honeybees, but just as important to pollination. They are named for the way in which they construct their nests. This specie of bee lays its eggs in a hollow tube or crack and seals the end of up with mud. Â
Solitary Bees- Why mason bees are different than honey bees
Not Hive DwellersÂ
These bees don’t live in hives like honey bees and don’t work for a queen bee but they gather pollen strictly for their own purposes.
After locating a sufficient place to create a nest, the female bee will gather pollen and fill in the hollow places she has selected. When space is filled with pollen, she will back into the space, lay one egg, then cap off the end with mud.
How keeping a mason bee house can supercharge your garden!
Keeping a mason bee house has many benefits. Mason bees don’t produce honey, but they do provide garden benefits and will enable your food-producing plants to produce more and flowers to grow bigger.
Mason bees will work on rainy days, whereas honey bees will not and these bees will also continue to gather pollen in chilly weather. Three mason bees can pollinate an entire fruit tree, so it does not take many of these efficient pollinators to keep a large garden and landscape well pollinated. One mason bee can perform the same pollination as several hundred honey bees.Â
Mason bees are also much hardier than honey bees since they have adapted to the particular climate and are less likely to move out of the area due to weather conditions or lack of their favorite type of pollen. They have adapted to whatever the elements of the area throw their way.Â
Mason bees also keep closer to your yard where honey bees will often travel miles to find flowers. Since mason bees staying closer to their mason bee house, they are guaranteed to pollinate your property vs neighbor miles down the road.Â
