The unusual and perhaps most noteworthy thing about this project is the access I have to my population of Osmia Rufa / Cornuta / solitary bees / Orchard Mason bees (call them what you like).  I have built an unusual habitat to observe the:

The construction of the artificial habitat has several viewing advantages, it :

1. has a removable lid so I can look inside
2. has clear plastic tubes – so that I can see the bees activities,
3. Is positioned just below a first floor window ledge so I can lean out and film the bees from above
4. Attracts bees that are not aggressive nor shy around humans, so I can observe their life-cycle with no personal risk

Hence I am able to film and photo them with simple digital camera.  Observing them is also interesting because I learn, pose questions about their behaviour and sometimes am surprised by what goes on in their life-cycle…

Competitiveness Creates Fruit

Allegedly the Mason Orchard bee is 10 times more effective as a pollinators than the more commonly known Western honey bee. With my privileged window into their intimate life, I am gathering strong indicators as why this may be so; competition for tunnel habitats is fierce (I see fights and hairs literally being chewed off by others), and Mason Bees have a different way of transporting pollen on the underside of their abdomen which makes their work more ‘messy’…

Monster in the box

It is a little like watching a Big Brother reality show. Nothing has surprised me more than a suspected incident of larva cannibalism this year seen in tube #4 of the Big Bee House.  It doesn’t appear to be from the main Orchard Mason species populating the majority of the box, nor would the larval cannibalism suggest that it is a close relative.

Learning Curves and Sizeable Revelations

It is also impressive that within one single agglomeration (it’s not a colony) there is a real diversity of size within the actual male and female populations.  Due to the variability of available habitat each year, there must be advantages in maintaining some large and some small sized bees.  Or could it be a function of how much pollen is stocked before the cell is sealed? or the internal diameter of my tubes?
The learning curve, the surprises and my experiments to create the ideal habitat are what makes this one interesting little eco-project.