Master pollinators: Invest in your garden with mason bees

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Soon it will be springtime and local gardens will be sprouting upward. When this occurs pollination will become important. Typically, bees take charge of the tall task, as they are well recognized by gardeners and farmers all over as the most important pollinators in most ecosystems.

The problem is that honey bees dominate the industry, when in fact a different species of bee — mason bees — might be a better option.

Fundamentally, mason bees differ in a couple significant ways that are beneficial to homeowners. The first reason is that these type of bees are known for being much harder workers. They nest alone in holes and serve themselves individually rather than live in a hive under the slave labor of a queen bee. Ultimately, this keeps mason bees from being aggressive. In addition, the males don’t have stingers and the females will only sting if trapped or squeezed.

Rob Sculley of local gardening business “Shorty’s” in Ridgefield says he’s owned mason bees himself before and says they’re great.

“You never have to worry about them hurting you. If they stung you, you probably wouldn’t even know it.”

On the productivity side of things, mason bees are far more accomplishing than honey bees. According to the Portland Nursery, honey bees pollinate an average of about 5 percent of the flowers it visits in a day. Mason bees pollinate a whopping 95 percent. Mason bees also visit more than double the amount of flowers in a day compared to honey bees.

“Their (mason bees) main goal is solely to collect pollen,” says Sculley.



He says this differs from honey bees who also equally focus on nectar, which limits their pollination output in comparison.

“They’re also more active in cooler weather,” says Sculley. “Mason bees will go out in tougher conditions, whereas honey bees will stay inside.”

In North America there are about 140 different mason bee types. In the Pacific Northwest the most common one is Osmia Lignaria, otherwise referred to as simply the “orchard bee.” They look almost identical to a standard house fly, as they have black bodies and a blue iridescent sheen.

Keeping mason bees as pets is the easiest way to get them over to your garden. The website crownbees.com (based out of Woodinville) is a good place to start according to Sculley. Once you’ve got the bees, the hardest part is keeping them around, which really isn’t too difficult if you know what you’re doing.

A final thing to know about mason bees should you invest in their services this coming spring is their life cycle. Mason bees emerge early in the spring when temperatures start to average about 50 degrees. Once out of the nest (males a little sooner than females) the bees mate and the males die a short time later.

The females, though, start to gather pollen and nectar and lay eggs in the back of their nesting hole. After about four to six weeks she will die and the new bees will emerge the following spring. During the non-active period of the fall and winter, people who own mason bees sometimes store the nests indoors (such as a garage or shed) so that predators and harsh weather will not harm the coming generation.