So you have gone out and bought or have been given a Costco bee house, shaped like a pretty alpine bungalow . Only problem is, their design is contrary to all the best practises of mason bee housing.
See the previous post I did on this here:
However, all is not lost. You can rehabilitate the house so that it has a better chance of working .
Steps to follow:
1. Remove all the short bamboo tubes which are glued in .. Just get a screwdriver and pliars and pry them out.
2. Reject the ones with nodes halfway down the tube which allows only a few inches to be useful to the bees. However if you have a drill, you could drill out these tubes.
3. The following diagrams show how you can split the tubes with an exacto blade and then tape them back up. This will allow you to remove the cocoons for cleaning at the end of the season and prevent a deadly buildup of parasitic mites.
4. In the tubes which have too large an opening,
insert tubes of either phragmites reed, cardboard or rolled paper tubes so that these can be extracted at the end of the season to recover the cocoons.
5. Open-ended tubes should have the back end sealed.. I used a glue-gun to do this.