Tag Archives: red mason bees

Bee hotel winter management

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If you have a bee hotel containing cardboard tubes or a wooden bee box with separate units and trays, then October is the perfect time to move out any occupants into a drier and safer place to spend the winter.

You can tell if there are occupants by the number of sealed tubes or entrance holes. Red mason bees (Osmia bicornis), by far the most common bee hotel guests, plug the tubes/entrances with mud after laying their eggs in the tubes or trays, Blue mason bees (Osmia caerulescens) and Orange-vented mason bees (Osmia leaiana) use finely chewed leaf and leafcutter bees (Megachile) make their front door from pieces of leaves. As you can see from the photos above, we only have Red mason bees nesting in our bee hotels.

Behind each plugged entrance there could be seven or eight cocoons from which adult bees should emerge next spring – the males first as they are laid at the front of the tubes, the females at the back of the tubes.

The cocoons started life as an egg laid by the female mason or leafcutter bee. When the egg hatched into a larvae a few months ago it gorged itself on all the pollen its mother had provisioned in the cell and then began to spin a silk cocoon and pupate into an adult bee.

We can help the bees on this journey.

  1. Some tubes or units can can get damp and mouldy over winter, so I think it’s best to remove them and store in a cool, dry place like a shed. I either pop the whole hotel into a cardboard box and store it there, or just the tubes. And I also store the inside unit of a bee observation box.
  2. A step further is to open up the cardboard tubes and tease out the cocoons, or prise them out of the detachable wooden bee boxes. The cocoons look like small kidney beans covered in fuzz. This fuzzy stuff is specks of bee poo and could also be parasitic grubs. Dust it off with a soft brush and wipe with a damp cloth until the black cocoons are smooth and shiny (like the photo above)*. Then place the cocoons on some kitchen roll to absorb any excess water before storing them in a cardboard or plastic box with a lid. Put the box in a cold place like a garage or shed. Label the box just in case you forget what’s in it!
  3. Red mason bee cocoons can also be popped into the fridge as they can be safely stored at around 3-4 C.
  4. The next step is to thoroughly clean the bee hotel or nest box with a brush and hot, soapy water and bring it inside for winter. The bee boxes will have instructions for how to take them apart and clean.
  5. Then order new cardboard tubes to put in your cleaned bee hotels ready for next spring.

At the beginning of March, I will explain how to take the cocoons out of storage, but for the next few months you can have peace of mind knowing that they will be safe and sound in their winter home…

* Thanks to Rosybee for the cocoon photo, I couldn’t find any of ours

Bees and lockdown

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  • Hairy-footed flower bee
  • Red mason bee

It’s been a challenging spring for all of us, but a fantastic one for the bees. They’ve been able to take advantage of the lengthening days, blossoming trees, and warmer than average temperatures to get out and collect food.

Spring is always a crucial time for bees. Honeybees emerge from the hive after winter and need to forage for nectar and pollen to take back to the hive to feed the young. The queen bee is busying laying eggs and these hatch into hungry larvae. Queen bumblebees also emerge from their temporary winter residencies to find a new home where they will lay stores of food and rear a new colony. And a new generation of solitary bees are born. One of the most common in urban gardens, the Red mason bees (Osmia bicornis), usually appear from the bee hotels we’ve erected on the south-facing side of our garden shed at the end of April, or early May. But this year, there was frenzied activity around the entrance of the hotels weeks earlier. The male bees, which check-out first, were buzzing expectantly around the hotels waiting for the females to be born so they could pounce on them and mate. She then finds clean, vacant ‘rooms’ in a hotel and spends the next 6 weeks filling them with eggs and pollen she collects from nearby flowers, often a blossoming apple tree.

  • Bee hotels under shed
  • Plugged tubes contain bees
  • Male red mason bee being born

Other than a few rainy, blustery days, it’s been perfect for bee spotting. And with lockdown, there has never been a better time to observe the natural world right under our noses. While we have had to adapt to a ‘new normal’, nature has been continuing apace. And many of us have been able to take some comfort in trees coming into leaf, bees buzzing and the joyful sound of bird song, often shut out in cities by the noise of road traffic and planes.

Planting Comfrey in a new flower bed near to the house means that we have attracted many more Hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) to the garden this spring. So we’ve had the pleasure of watching the females with their furry black bodies and outstretched proboscis (straw like tongue) darting between the purple bell-flowers sucking up the nectar, with pollen on their back legs. They really are the most adorable bee, and so distinctive; perfect for any beginner bee-spotter to identify. Just plant the Comfrey and they will come.

  • Female Hairy-footed flower bee hovering ….
  • Now she’s on the Comfrey drinking its nectar

The other flowers that are attracting most bees in the garden just now are all considered weeds – Alkanet, Forget-me-nots, and White dead nettles. Will the Alliums and honeysuckle lure them away , when they are in full bloom (any day now)?

Over the next few weeks, the role of the beekeeper is vital to ensure the honeybee colonies are strong and healthy. They will visit hives weekly to inspect the colonies. The bees may need feeding if the weather turns bad, or extra storage space if the weather is fine to store the nectar they are collecting to turn into honey – their winter food. Beekeepers may also need to undertake swarm management to prevent bees swarming in the city environment. For this reason, beekeepers are allowed to undertake this crucial work during lockdown.

For the rest of us, we can take enjoyment in observing different bees in our gardens or in the parks and streets where we are taking our daily exercise. For help with ID, try the fantastic Field Studies Council ID chart , the great photos in Penny Metal’s book, Insectinside or Steven Falk’s comprehensive, Field Guide the the Bees of Britain.

Happy bee spotting!