Author: GarryF

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

Beneficial Pollinator -American sand wasp

At the home of one of my neighbours in Metchosin where I place a mason bee box each year there is a patch of very sandy ground where there is a large colony of the Bembix Americana, the American Sand Wasp .  I noticed them on many of the plants in the garden also .

An interesting article appears in Wikipedia showing that these are also predators of other insects. I hope they don’t take our mason bees too.

“The Bembicini, or sand wasps, are a large tribe of bembecid wasps, comprising 20 genera. Bembicines are predators on various groups of insects.[1] The type of prey captured tends to be rather consistent within each genus, with flies (Diptera) being the most common type of prey taken. Nests are typically short, simple burrows, with a single enlarged chamber at the bottom which is stocked with freshly paralysed prey items for the developing wasp larva; the egg may sometimes be laid before the chamber is completely stocked. It is common for numerous females to excavate nests within a small area where the soil is suitable, creating large and sometimes very dense nesting aggregations, which tend to attract various species of parasitic flies and wasps, many of which are cleptoparasites; in some cases, the sand wasps prey on their own parasites (e.g.,[2]), a surprisingly rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom.[3] Although sand wasps are normally yellow and black, some are black and white with bright green eyes.

See my entry in iNaturalist

Houdini fly invasion


Two years ago I had never heard of the Houdini Fly.  However at that time  they were starting to  turn up in the Duncan area. This year I encountered them in several of my mason bee nest boxes I have placed on surrounding farms in the Metchosin area so they are a recent invading parasite for mason bee larvae production.

These are probably the most destructive parasites of mason bee colonies as they will eat through all the cocoons in a tube if allowed to remain through the fall and winter. The best solution is to clean out the mason bee incubating tubes as soon as possible, even as early as late August. It is important to leave those tubes that have not been sealed by then for a few more weeks in the bee house as later nesting leaf-cutter bees and other pollinating wasps and bees may still be working.

Not cleaning out your colonies early may lead to total cocoon production  failure.

See this link for other parasites of mason bees:
https://gfletcher.ca/category/mason-bees-and-phragmites_reed-grass-tubes/mason-bee-parasites/

iNaturalist: Participate as a Citizen Scientist for Biodiversity

If you everwonder how you can do something to counter the Biodiversity crisis, you can, with minimum experience contribute to the documentation of biodiversity using the iNaturalist app.  You don’t have to be a scientist, just an observant person with a cell phone.

iNaturalist posts

I have recorded my observations of species over the past few years and even found and digitized images from 40 years ago.

If you put the word bee in the search box on that page you can see the variety of pollinators I have come across and recorded on iNaturalist .

Thanks for Joining Us at the Following Seedy Saturday/Sundays

Thanks to all who visited my table at the six seedy Saturdays in the spring of 2024.  I was pleased to see a great level of interest from many people who are enthusiastic about adding to the populations of these efficient pollinators and the control of mason bee predators.  It was also good to see that many people appreciated the effectiveness of the phragmites reed grass tubes and returned to invest in more reeds.


Thanks to those who put their name on the mailing list, and now I will be reminding them throughout the year about the steps they need to take at different times of the year to best care for their bees. A big thanks also to the many volunteers in the communities who  work so hard to make these popular meets so successful. 

I sold Mason bee cocoons and Phragmites reed grass tubes of all sizes at the following Seedy Saturdays /Sundays in February/March 2024.

Come with your questions and your kids..(We will hatch some cocoons for them.) 

 

 

Nanaimo Seedy Sunday: 

Sunday March 3,

10 AM- 3PM

 

 

 

Westshore Seedy Saturday ..their inaugural year!
Saturday, March 9,  11 Am-3 PM

 

 

 

Cobble Hill Seedy Saturday 

Saturday March 16, 10 AM-2 PM

 

 

 

Duncan Seedy Sunday

Sunday March 24, 10 Am- 2 PM

 

 

Sooke Seedy Saturday

Saturday March 30, 10 AM -3 PM

 

 

Mason Bees prefer Phragmites tubes

I have several videos on here about harvesting Phragmites reed grass and cutting the tubes for mason Bee culture.  Here is an example provided by Brian Guzda of Duncan (https://www.instagram.com/briansmasonbees/?hl=en) which shows how mason bees preferentially fill up the Phragmites tubes before laying their eggs in wooden trays.  Brian also comments on those plastic trays-” 70% corn material and 30% plastic resin.  I have used one since 2018 and find not a great return with lot of mold and mildew inside the holes. No place for the moisture to be absorbed like wood or cardboard tubes can do. ”

This post was originally published in March 2023**

Mason Bee tube preferences

I did an experiment this year comparing the wooden blocks to phragmites tubes , and bamboo tubes to phragmites reed grass tubes .. here are the results in the third week of May 2023.

Phragmites reed grass tubes at the top, bamboo tubes at the bottom (these were split first then taped together so they can be opened if there are cocoons inside)
Here a block of wooden stackable trays is compared to my phragmites tubes .. note so far in the third week of May 2023 only one hole in the wood trays is filled .. we will check again later.  Follow-up … at the end of the season there were no more holes in the wooden trays. All the phragmites tubes were fillled.

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 on the “Mason Bees for Sale” website;

This post was originally published in May 2023

Cost comparisons of Mason Bee Cocoons and Phragmites tubes


I have had a hunch lately that the cost of mason bee cocoons has followed the pattern we see in the rest of the industries and has risen considerably so I have done some comparisons with my prices with an American and  Canadian companies.
I also saw Brian Guzda at Duncan Seedy Saturday and he has also done some investigating and found the following :
He said “I checked mason bee cocoon prices from 12 different sources mostly on the island and a few from the lower mainland with :
The average price per cocoon working out to $1.68 each.
The high  was 2.25. per cocoon.  Definitely over priced.”

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Buckerfields 10 cocoons– regular $15.99. that’s $1.60 per cocoon !

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BC Bee, Beekeeping Supply: (Canadian)
Mason bee cocoons $22.50 per 10 cocoons = $2.25 per cocoon
Cardboard tubes: $14.00 for 20 = $0.70 per  tube
(unknown if there are shipping costs)
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Crown bees in the US:
Mason Bee Cocoons: 20 for $29.95 US = $40.28 (Can)= $2.01 (Can) per cocoon
Phragmites tubes: 50 = 16.95 US , or $22.79 (Canadian)= $0.4558 per tube (Can)
(unknown if there are shipping costs)
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Metchosin Mason Bees: (in $ Canadian)
Mason bee Cocoons : 30 for 25 cocoons = $0.83   per cocoon

Phragmites native reed grass tubes  33 for $15.00  = $0.4545 per tube
and if they have to be mailed  33 for $20.00  = $0.60 per tube

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