Day: November 9, 2024

Phragmites tubes and Mason Bee Cocoons–2025 season

See all my posts on Mason Bees here https://www.gfletcher.ca/?cat=2

I will not know until the spring of 2025 if I will have mason bee cocoons to sell this year, as results in my boxes here in the southern end of Vancouver Island were very poor this year– most likely a weather-related cause. However, I do have for sale, Phragmites reed grass tubes for culturing mason bees .   I can ship the tubes through the mail.–  For customers who are not local, I package these tubes in lots of 30 for $15.00 plus shipping costs of $7:00. So 15 tubes =$22.00, (Canadian) Included are a variety of lengths and diameters. A few smaller diameters attract other mason bee species and leafcutter bees. Indicate the maximum tube length you prefer when ordering.

See all my posts on Mason Bees here https://www.gfletcher.ca/?cat=2
If I have enough Cocoons this year I will sell 25 Mason Bee Cocoons for $25.00 for pick up at my farm in Metchosin. Please check with me first by email before ordering.
NOTE: I DO NOT SEND COCOONS BY MAIL. you can pick them up at the farm

The native reed Phragmites australis ssp. americanus  is grown on my farm. These are  considered to be the best tubes for encouraging the native mason bee pollinators….Check out the reasons for using Phragmites tubes and comparisons with other types of tubes here: 

Also by putting out the tubes alone without releasing bees, you can in some areas attract the native pollinators to build their nests in the empty tubes anyway.  That’s the way I first obtained mason bee cocoons.

See below for details on ordering if you cannot pick them up at the farm. I can have these available at any time of year, and it is best to get them set out by mid-March. 

For shipping in Canada, the price for 30 tubes=$22.00 Canadian

For shipping in Canada, the price for 60 tubes=$44.00 Canadian

For shipping in Canada, the price for 100 tubes=$70.00 Canadian

For shipping in Canada, the price for 130 tubes=$90.00 Canadian

In a separate email with your address, state your size preference as sizes 4″ (10cm) to 7 “(18 cm)  or mixed are available. This will depend on the depth of the box you have in which to put them, as there should be at least a 2 inch overhang to keep out the rain–
Use the email garryf followed by the@ sign then gmail.com for e-transfers address

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Scroll down through other posts to see my suggestions for building inexpensive Mason bee homes out of recycled and re-purposed material

See all posts on Mason Bees here https://www.gfletcher.ca/?cat=2

Observations on Pollinators , September 2024

In  cleaning out my mason bee nest houses this fall I took the following photos showing some of the variety of pollinators and the parasites I encountered as well .

The first observation was that this was a very poor year for mason bee cocoon production. In many  of the 10 houses like this that I set out on farms in the Metchosin area, there were barely enough cocoons to even break even with the amount of cocoons I had stocked the house with when I set it out in the spring. I believe that spring weather patterns played a big part in the problem 

It may be that early warm spring weather followed by cooler and rainy weather where temperatures did not reach the necessary 13 degrees for several hours a day for hatching and pollination might have influenced the lack of success.

This image of the different types of sealed phragmites tubes shows the presence of different pollinators. note the smooth mud layer sealing versus the fibrous covering .  The smooth ones can indicate the normal blue mason bee or very smooth ones, pollinator wasps ( see below) . The fibrous ones are typical of the smaller species of mason bee, also below.

 

 

 

This is what the normal sized blue mason bee cocoons look like in successful tubes. There can be up to 12 cocoons like this in a phragmites tube.

 

 

 

 

The black cigar-shaped pellets are frass , or bee manure. They often totally cover a cocoon as is shown here in this photo.

 

 

 

 

I noticed his year for the first time that long curly frass like this often was an indicator of the cocoon being parasitized by the mono wasp so I would separate these out and candle them later .

 

This was another parasite finding. the Houdini Fly for which I have provided a separate post for here. 

 

Another different looking cocoon is from a smaller species of mason bee. These are found in the tubes with a fibrous sealant as mentioned above.
The cocoons of the smaller version of mason bees appear with a silvery coating over them . Identification of some of the mason bee species is difficult. I have included many on my iNaturalist site  at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?subview=table&taxon_id=630955&user_id=garryfletcher

 

 

 

I also found several tubes where several species of mason bee had shared the same tube, although this is not very common.  Here you can see the three larger blue mason bee cocoons near the bottom

 

 

 

Below are some of the different small sized mason bees that hatched this year

So my last message is that you need to be prepared for several alternatives when you open your Phragmites tubes in September and don’t throw away those other good pollinator species.

See also this post on Some more new pollinators from last year

Also see this post on other pollinator species and on the mason bee mites

This link is to an iNaturalist curator , Dr. John Ascher who is an expert on pollinator bees