I am a keeper!

I became aware of them just after we moved to Liarton and had a bigger yard with more gardens, both flower and vegetable. We use honey as our sweetener of choice and thought it would be fun to have a honey beehive to supply our sweet needs and to pollinate the gardens. We dialed up the interwwweb and did some research and discovered that bee keeping can be initially expensive to get outfitted with all the latest and proper gear. On top of that initial expense, there is the cost of the bees themselves, which I had never even considered and that is when we were told about Mason Bees.

We were educated about mason bees by our neighbour. Because he is a retired botanist, we knew he knew what the scoop was on these tiny little pollinators. Smaller than a honey bee, you have probably seen them. It never registers they are a bee because they are often darker and about half the size of the easily identified honey bee. I believe that the honey bee has a much better reputation as a hard worker, simply because they have a better press agent. In reality, a mason bee pollinates about 10 times as much as their prettier and more well-publicized cousins. Mason bees are solitary (lonely?) and only need to take care of the eggs she lays, as opposed to a hive society.

They are ugly and look like a fly, but they collect pollen for the same reason honey bees do, that is to feed the next generation. All a mason bee needs is a crack or naturally occurring hole; that is where the female lays a single egg at a time in cocoons made of mud, hence the name mason bee. Did I just say “hence?” No workers or staff to deal with and even the males are expendable because they die a few days after mating. That also means no honey production to feed the hive… or me!

The eggs are laid one at a time and are separated by mud with the males emerging first near the “entrance.” The females follow a few days later from the rear of the hole. The males are totally obsessed with…er…ahem…procreation. In some cases, rather than wait for the females to emerge naturally, the males will help speed the process by digging the females out. The wise males would be smarter to pace themselves because they die a few days after procreating, but when a mason bee goes into “rut” there is no explaining anything to them.

Mason bees are wild and surprisingly common. You can give them a head start by buying cocoons in the spring and providing a bee house for them and their offspring. Our total cost for a dozen cocoons and a small bee house with paper tubes for the future eggs was about $35. I consider that to be a minor cost because they are somewhat entertaining. By daily checking the bee “houses,” we now have a second larger bee residence — I am a good landlord.

You could say we collect our bee rent by having a well pollinated and successful garden and we are not tasked with the upkeep and responsibilities of keeping honey bees. We do not even need to wear all that expensive and cool looking sting preventing masks and coveralls because mason bees are stinger challenged. Without a hive and thousands of bees to protect, mason bees have become less aggressive and peace-loving hard workers. They do sting but only when squeezed or in a bar fight.

I am lazy enough to keep on keeping on being a keeper because mason bees are…keepers. Bee seeing you!