Notes for today, April 7, 2026
It’s sunny and everything is in bloom, so this will be short. There is lots to do today. Speaking of “sunny and everything is in bloom” that means that our bees are out and flying. There is more sun on the way for the next couple of days, which is good in a lot of ways, but it also means that the ground is drying out. Your females, once they hatch, will be looking for mud sources. If they don’t find what they need in the form of wet clay, they will move their location or you will find fewer eggs laid. They will waste a lot of time looking for wet mud. I solve the problem by watering between my garden beds but their other ways to give them the mud they need.
One good way to ensure the perfect mud is to dig a 6-to-12-inch hole, not under the nest, but nearby and keep it moist. If you have a problem with birds hanging out around the hole, put a little chicken wire over the hole. Perfect garden soil, sandy soil, or soil that won’t hold together won’t do. If you don’t have that type of soil when you dig down, you can purchase it online through companies who sell mason bees. Another option is to buy PLAIN cat litter where the only thing listed is CLAY. Pack the litter into the sides of the hole and water well. The hole will dry out from the top but the bees will go deeper to find the perfect mix. You may have your own way of supplying mud for your bees, but however you do it, just make sure they have it available.
I’m off to water my garden…and they clay between the rows.
Notes for today, March 21, 2026
A little background to bring you up to speed
We’ve been away from posting and our website for several months. Two years ago, success in our fostering program almost broke us, physically, and we decided to change our tactics. We donated our bees, houses, and nesting materials to Master Gardeners of Cowlitz County and gave them 2 years of guidance and support. It has been a great success, and the fostering program is going strong. Each spring bees, houses, and nesting material is distributed to people who have signed up at no charge. In June the materials are picked up, and housed in a controlled environment. In the fall cocoons are harvested and refrigerated until spring when the process starts again. The “foster homes” get the pollination and the fun of watching the bees and the master gardeners get the bees and the knowledge that comes with working the bees. With over 20 master gardeners involved in the process, it’s a bit more organized. We could not have carried it forward much longer, but this gives the program the possibility to continue.
With all that being said and done over the past 2 years, we are in the process of reviving our website. We still don’t sell anything from this website, but we do try to give information about the bees and the environment in Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon. In the coming weeks we will be putting a few links in that we feel are important, a more inclusive list of spring pollinator plants and more pictures.
What’s currently happening in our area
If you think Spring is early this year, you are right. It doesn’t mean that it can’t snow in April…we’ve seen that! It does mean that some of the bloom is already happening. At our elevation of 200 feet, on our property we are seeing Indian plum (those are the trees in white bloom along the highways), some early maple, false nettle, camellia bushes, pieris japonica (andromeda), huckleberry, hyacinth, willow, alder, tulip trees, Oregon grape. This is not a complete list, so look around and see what is out there. Some plants such as daffodils and forsythia have been hybridized and have little or no pollen and nectar.
The question is “when should I put out my bees”.
The weather is important. They need temperatures in the mid to upper 50s to hatch and if you have a bee house with an attic, the temperature will be warmer than the outside. Once they hatch, they will need food. If your area doesn’t have enough bloom to accommodate them, they will leave. And by area, I mean 300 feet…think “football field” for distance. These are solitary bees and they have no hive to protect. It’s early by about a week for us, but except for a couple rainy days next week, it feels like we might be headed for a drying streak. On-and -off showers are fine but a week of solid rain would be a bad thing. We have plenty of bloom happening, so I’m releasing my bees this weekend.
Some additional thoughts about pollen and nectar:
Not all pollen and nectar are the same, some are richer than others; for example, almond blossoms have a low protein value, while dandelion blooms are rich in nectar and pollen protein. If you let some of your vegetables go through the winter, and they bloom (for example, kale), you will find all kinds of bees happily gathering the rich source of nectar and pollen. Clustering your flowers will be a bigger draw for your pollinators than a single flower.
Notes for Today April 28, 2023
We finally have our temperatures in the range for hatching, although my hardy little bees have been managing to hatch and survive during the past month. Now with everything in bloom…and I mean everything, at least at our place, they should thrive. Even if you think you don’t have enough food for your bees, please release them. It’s getting late in the season and they will have a 50% chance of hatching if you wait much longer.
We’ve had fun the past couple of days. A friend gave us her tubes filled with bees, and other things, but she didn’t have time to harvest them. So, in March we put them in our refrigerator, unopened. When it was time to release them, we started opening the straws planning to clean and sort. They (the bees) decided it was time to hatch. Who am I to argue with a bee! We unwrapped the straws, removed the obvious parasitic wasp cocoons and put the bees in a tray. As they were hatching, I put them in our garage and opened a window partway making them safe from birds and other critters. Yesterday my husband and I sat in the sun for about an hour watching them hatch and leave the tray. Some of them flew off, and some of them hung around looking for “the girl of their dreams”. One stayed on my thumb for about 15 minutes until I finally was able to convince him he needed to leave home. At one time, they were hatching at about 1 every 10 seconds. They make an interesting sound as they chew through their cocoons, almost like chewing on miniature potato chips. Yes, you can hear it if you get your ear close to a couple thousand bees, and yes, I did that.
Temperatures are going to go back to reasonable and really not too hot or too cold. The bees and I will love it.
Notes for Today March 28, 2023
I’ve finished with most of my talks, and I’ve had some very good questions. I’d like to share some of the answers in case anyone reading this has the same questions.
Nesting material – No plastic straws. The straw will hold moisture and will kill the developing larva. Always use the cardboard tubes with the inserts. Don’t use inserts alone. Parasitic wasps can get through. You can use reeds, but as with straws, replace the nesting material every year. Cardboard tubes will last 4-5 years. Wood blocks that can be taken apart can be used without tubes. Wood blocks that are drilled but cannot be taken apart need a paper liner that can be removed. Do not use bamboo. Bamboo has naturally occurring nodes that can restrict the length of the nesting area, and the holes are seldom the right diameter. Bamboo cannot easily be opened to harvest your mason bees.
Harvesting mason bees is necessary to rid them of pests and diseases. If you don’t, all the blossom mites, parasitic wasps, Houdini flies, carpet beetles, chalkbrood, etc. will be back in your yard, increasing every year.
For housing, wood seems to be a good choice. It doesn’t overheat like metal does, it absorbs moisture, unlike plastic, and it won’t get soggy like cardboard will. Whatever housing you use, put screening at the opening to keep out birds, but with large enough holes for the bees to fly through (1 inch chicken wire works well). Make the housing longer than the nesting material so there is a space between screening and nesting material. It leaves a “porch” in front which helps keep birds at a distance and nesting material out of the rain.
It’s still cold out, and the long-range forecast is for a cooler than normal April. No false spring this year! Still, the blooms are starting to happen, and during the couple warm days last week we saw wild bees (including bumblebees) flying. In our area we can see flowering cherry, wild plum, Pieris Japonica, willow, and Asian plum. It’s enough to put a few cocoons out and be assured they have plenty to eat. If you have enough cocoons, you can do more than one release. We only have a few weeks to put them out. Cocoons set out after May 1st may not be viable, they will have lost too much of their fat stores.
Notes for Today March 8, 2023
It’s been a week of talks, questions, and answers. I’m sensing that people are starting to get ready for spring; and with that, releasing their bees. Here are some thoughts based on conversations and questions.
Last year was a terrible year for bees. We lost about 2/3rds of our cocoons due to weather, so if you lost your bees, there may have been nothing you could have done. An unexpected snow storm in the middle of April is a very bad event for bees. We survived because we put out our cocoons twice…once in the early spring and once at the end of April. Any later than that and the bees won’t be strong enough to survive (they have burned through all their fat stores).
Always use a cardboard outer tube to go with the white insert tubes. The white insert tubes are disposable when you harvest, and the brown outer tubes can last about 5 years. The break apart wood trays we’ve had for about 10 years, and they are still usable. They don’t need the white insert tubes. Reeds and other hollow stemmed natural material should be replaced every year when you harvest…AND YOU SHOULD DO A HARVEST! Do NOT use bamboo. It’s too hard to open and the nodes may be too close together for mason bees. We have invasive pests that can overwinter in nesting material and hatch out the following spring to infest your yard.
The gnat sized flying insects that you may have seen last summer around your bee boxes are probably parasitic wasps. They can be mostly (not totally) barred from your bees by a fine meshed screen over the bee house opening or putting the nesting material in a fine mesh bag. If you have mice, you may have to use metal screening (like porch screening).
So far this spring, it’s been 10-15 degrees below average. I’m not holding out hope for an early spring. Nothing is really blooming yet, but I see the Peiris Japonica, also called andromeda, blooms are out (not open).
Fingers crossed that it’s a better spring this year!
Notes for Today February 11, 2023
It’s one of those rare days when the sun is out, and it almost feels like spring. Perhaps I’m being optimistic. We are definitely getting more light and a little more sun time. I’m so ready!
My husband, Gary, is making new bee houses and repairing some of the older ones. We don’t take down the outsides houses on our property unless they need repair that can’t be done on location. Some of them have gone through 15 years of weather and are still “standing”. Most of the “wear and Tear” seems to be roof warping. Gary has tried several design and material variations and he’s found that marine plywood or Baltic birch plywood seems to be the best.
Last year was a difficult one. The year before (2021) we harvested over 40,000 cocoons. It was our best year ever. So last spring we distributed 9,000 cocoons, and we thought we were off to a good start. Mother nature put us in our place a couple of weeks later, in April, when an unexpected snowstorm came in and killed bees and bloom. We ended up with about 13,000 cocoons…enough to start over. We learned a couple lessons: It pays to put out more than one batch of cocoons if you have enough to do so, and it doesn’t matter how many pollinators you have, if the weather kills the bloom, you won’t get the fruit. I read (somewhere) that these will be a hardier bee when they hatch. Sure hope they’re right.
At the end of this month, I will start “my talks”. I haven’t done much speaking since Covid hit, but it looks like things are picking up. We have a calendar on this website if you are interested, but the bottom line is I will be talking at Woodland and Yale libraries, Tsugawa Nursery, WSU Extension, the Home and Garden show, and a Zoom talk. Not everything is about mason bees. Strawberries and vegetable gardening are also on my list, but if you show up and mention mason bees, I’m liable to get sidetracked.
I keep opening my bees’ refrigerator (yes, they have their own), and telling them it will be soon and then they will see things they never dreamed of…if only for a few weeks.