Bee Houses

Part of our mission on the farm is to promote and develop wildlife habitat--including habitat for pollinators.  John built these darling houses for Mason and Orchard Bees.  They don't produce honey, but they do an excellent job pollinating--even better than honeybees.

The tubes you can see are bamboo (a renewable resource) sections cut to 5 1/2" - 6" lengths.  Amazingly the Mason Bee Queen will produce males or females based on whether these tubes are more or less than 6 inches in length--crazy cool!  We have two houses hanging up in the yard now.

Mason Bee {photo starlisa's flickr}

John tried a couple different kinds of tubes for the bees to use, to experiment.  Something has been working on the houses, but no sighting yet!

Along with the smaller bees, we are planning to provide the proper habitat for the cuddly bumble bee.    We are excited about our little bee friends, and this will tide us over until we get our first honeybee colony in 2013!