Bee Harvest

 With the first frost approaching, we knew it was time to bring in the bees. This was our second year with Mason Bees, and we had learned much from our first season. 

This year started with a new bee house that hubby built. He designed it so that parchment paper inserts could be placed into the back of the house with excess folded outside of the holes for ease of harvesting later, and it would then mount with brackets onto the fence facing east to get good sun all day.

My son brought the house in before the first overnight freezing temps, and we kept it in the garage for a couple of days while I made sure I knew what to do for the harvest.

First, was removing each of the parchment rolls from the house and sorting them. Most of the tubes had filled (Yay!), I think we ended up tossing about 8 that had no occupants. Then we had to figure out which ones were the mason bees. We had noticed in June, after about 20 tubes had been filled there was a pause, so we assumed that the mason bee season was over. Then about a month later, we found that tubes were starting to fill up again. This time they looked quite different. With Mason Bees, you generally get a consistent mud texture that dries to a grayish brown. These tubes were bright green, red, orange, and some were quite rocky. Turns out, they are quite likely leaf-cutter bees. These are another beneficial bee that has a later season and are good pollinators. Anyway, we needed to sort out the Mason Bee vs. Leaf-Cutter Bee tubes. It worked out to be about 50/50 between the two, about 20 tubes of each. 

Next, we opened each of the Mason bee tubes and removed all of the healthy cocoons, and discarded anything else. After all of the tubes were opened, the cocoons went into a bowl of room temp water for an initial rinse. Then, they went into a dilute bleach solution to kill off any harmful bacteria or parasites. Finally, one more final plain water rinse and onto a paper towel to dry briefly. Soaking in the water will not harm the cocoons, unless they have already been breached. Just don't leave them for long. 

   Finally, after the cocoons are dry, it's time to head to the refrigerator. We put ours in a container (a small coated box is fine) lined with fleece. As refrigerators nowadays are frost-free, they tend to be dry. These cocoons will need some humidity, but you don't want them sitting directly in water. You can keep them in a drawer that has a humidity setting, and/or keep a bit of water in your container. This is how I was shown by a neighbor who got us started on Mason Beekeeping. She lines her container with foam (like the kind you would use for crafting, not styrofoam or packing foam), puts a small amount of water in, then the cocoons on top of the foam to keep them from being in direct contact with the water. We didn't have foam, so I am trying fleece instead. 

These bees are AMAZING pollinators, and we have noticed a big increase in the amount of apples we have harvested the past couple of years. We started the season off with just under 30 cocoons, and ended up with 37 harvested to start next Spring. 

We found this link at Crown Bees to be super helpful for our bee harvest. They have some great resources for all aspects of raising Mason Bees and other beneficial wild bees.

These bees are very docile and so interesting to watch. We enjoyed time spent near their house just watching them do their thing. I would encourage anyone who is interested, to find out more about keeping Mason Bees. It's great for all ages and the benefits of bees is unlimited.