Tuesday Haikusday: Mason Bees

You Guys!

Are you familiar with Mason Bees? No? Well, let me explain. MomFOD recently built a little house with grandFOD complete with holes, a rain shield, and paper tubes. Why? For the Mason bees, of course! Mason bees are a type of solitary, non-stinging bee that pollinates a ton of flowers, does not produce honey, and leaves you a little nest of bees at the end of the season for next year.

masonbeetwo
My mason bee house.

We were super excited here about our bees! We stored them in the fridge (Yes, bees in the fridge – sharing is not my forte, but it was only for a few days) and then on release day, they hatched! Those little guys chewed their way out of their cocoons… and promptly flew away. They had mud, they had water, they had flowers and a house. In short, momFOD gave them everything and they abandoned her. One even sat on her shoulder and then flew away. And so, today, I wax poetic about the bees in the hopes that they will return. Eh hem…

Bees, bees, please come home.

Buzz your way back to our hearts

Because we love you.

.

Your sweetness does not

come from honey without but

from honey within.

.

We might as well have

thrown a twenty dollar bill

off the balcony.

.

We hope the bees come back home, but if they don’t, we’ll try again next year. And we encourage everyone else to try, too! It’s a wonderful way that home gardeners can help support the failing bee populations. They may not make honey, but they pollinate, and that’s so important to our food supplies. All you need is a little bee house hung in a south-facing, rain-free area, a hole filled with clay-like mud, and lots of flowers!

A bee, before he so callously left our lives.
A bee, before he so callously left our lives.

Go forth and pollinate!

Love,

Crepes.

17 Comments

  • We have a TON of carpenter bees, we love them, they come back year after year and I’m pretty sure between our carport and house eaves, we probably have somewhere between one and two dozen. We love our bees, and make sure they have plenty of food, with all the carpenter bee holes I’m sure we also have some mason bees living in the empty ones.

    • Renewed hope!!! Maybe they’ll see that this is better! Or maybe they went to the giant park next door and are living on river front property. We’ll still hope!

  • Well, that was kinda rude of those bees to take off without even a goodbye. They’ll see that they can’t make it in the big world and come back. Or at least we hope so.

  • crepes….due ewe leeve yur bee houz up then all yeer…well, knot like winter ….. N will sum more bees come bak later this summer…

    ~~~ if sew make sure ya charge em rent 🙂

    we get a varietee heer; honey bee; yellow jacket N wasps…N de occasional bumble bees…we like de bumble de best 🙂

  • Oh no!! We hope those bees come back! They sure are ungrateful…

    Very cool project though!

  • Maybe they are just off having a little rumspringa before coming home.. if nothing else, you helped the neighborhood..

  • Are those the bees that chew holes in the wooden parts of our house? The head peep isn’t terribly fond of the chewing holes part. It sounds like they are pretty unruly, so there’s not much hope of sending them to a bee version of a scratching post so that they can hang around and do their pollinating.

    • Nono, Mason bees don’t chew, they only build little walls. You might have carpenter bees. Mason bees used pre-drilled holes and cause no damage whatsoever! Except to hearts…

  • Stumps up! Funny and serious at the same time. Nice pics too….

  • No! Come back bees! Look at this bee palace right here! Where are you going?!?! O-M-C! There is just no understanding some bees. If we were bees, we’d live there!

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