Solitary Bees

It’s been a while since I post – part gathering more materials, part revamping my content, part busy with the day job. I also was focussed on uploading a number of videos on Youtube where I am beginning to provide a significant amount of content for those that are curious, and making friends being Monsieur solitarybee on twitter.

I have not discovered any leaf-cutter bees in my little plot of green, so bearing in mind my mason bees have finished their work for the year, the only solitary bees that I have recently identified flying around are the one or two Carpenter bees that enjoy the wysteria flowers and occasionally the lavender plants.

So in respect of moving my mason bee expansion project forward, I have been drilling some of my own wood blocks (that I can insert my paper tubes into), creating a new bee observation box, and excitedly counting the cocoons both in the plastic tubes (c.40), the home-made brown paper tubes (215) and the hollow plant stems (85+ – I can’t risk opening up the last 8 stems). When you consider that I started the 2009 season with just around a hundred cocoons, the idea of providing and testing new solitary bee tunnel habitats has been a very successful one. Effectively it has been a very successful year and proves that given enough opportunities, these bees will happily increase in their numbers.