I have never seen a day with my mason bees like today. I have treated them differently this year. I took the coccoons out of the paper tubes and just stored the cocoons. I had place 25 cocoons or so outside a couple weeks ago and noticed they had all opened but couldn't find the bees. Yesterday I took 100 or so cocoons and put them in a jar and left them in the house overnight. When I got up this morning almost all of them were out. This was one night from refridgerator to flying. The fridge is in good working order. It is cold and no food has spoiled. So I let the bees fly. Later I was digging holes for planting some bushes. They were 2 feet deep by 2 feet diameter. I noticed that after a few minutes mason bees were doing their thing looking for dirt. This is their first day. I looked at my blooming peach tree. There were at least 10-20 mason bees all over it. The blooming plum trees had mason bees in them too. Then I looked at the bee blocks. Bees were going in and out like crazy. One of my blocks is made of plastic and it is open to the daylight in the back. I can see in the holes and all the way to the back from the light. This block has 72 holes. When I looked into the holes 30 of them had bees in them. I quickly dug a hole right near the bee block for the bees to have quick access the dirt. I saw more mason be actvity today than in the last 5 years combined. I don't think I have enough bees out yet for these to be all 'my' bees. There were so many bees it seems some were native bees. So here is my question. Are mason bees truly 'solitary' bees. Could they just nest solitary but yet fly around in swarms? All I know is I should have made a video. I will be making more blocks this week.
It does appear that it's a case of "Bees Gone Wild". The relatively cool weather extending into April and then warming up like mad I believe has alot to do with it. Alot of simultaneous emergence. They of course start looking for mud almost immediately, and any digging you do is keenly investigated. I always keep a hole dug close by that goes down at least 12 inches, and toss some water in after sundown if things get dry.
I remember the first warm day we had a while back. I could stand near the bee "houses" and watch them zipping by my head back and forth down the line of blooming plum trees. Last night the wife and I sat out by the bees until sundown. The constant buzzing sound was quite remarkable.
I just hope they don't fill up all their spots and leave before the apples bloom.
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