hopefully when I'm done with this talk you will want to put these little guys in your yard okay what we're gonna do is I'm going to talk a little bit about the description of the mason bees how you can attract more of them to your home I'll do a little bit about mason bees versus versus honey bees we'll talk about the life cycle of a mason bee which is very important some of the pests that they can get and a little bit about cleaning them out cleaning out your cocoons in your nest okay these are called orchard mason bees sometimes people call them blue orchard mason bees they are native to the Pacific North America so they are one of our native bees they are what we call our early pollinators these guys are out usually mid-may - excuse me mid-march to mid-may that's when they do all their pollinating they come out when it's still a little bit too cold and the honeybees aren't out yet your early flowering crops like your blueberries and your some of your fruits your plums those are the ones that will really do really well by having mason bees around they're a very gentle be the males don't sting at all and the females will only sting if you trap them or straight are almost squish them in your clothes or something like that they're a solitary bee they don't have a queen they have a female and they have a male and that's all there that's all there is and like I mentioned they are active from mid-may to mid-march to mid-may this picture that you see of this little guy this is a boy easy to tell the boys from the girls the boys have that cute little white puffs of hair on top of their head or gray depending on how old he is I guess they also have longer antennas and the males are a little bit smaller than the females and that's usually the way it is in the insect world the males are smaller than the females all right what we're do may some bees nest they nested anything they can find that is a little bit bigger than the female's body which is somewhere between a quarter of an inch 3/8 of an inch they will like they in nature they like empty hollow hollow reeds bamboo anything that has a little bit of hole in it those of you that have T 111 siding we get calls people telling us that I've got these bees they're going into my siding and they're ruining it well mason bees do not drill holes they only use holes that are already there so you don't have to worry about them ruining the side of your house they're just using that little half of that little tiny hole that's already there for them perfect spot for them to go into I have seen them in electrical outlets and people have them in their shed or in their barn just the nice little hole perfect time perfect size for the female to make her little nest back there we have a display of mason bees and you'll see one that is no longer viable but it's in the the end of a hose nozzle any place they can find they will use but if you really want to encourage more of them to your home you can put out your own nest like I said there's a nice display back there and it has several different types of nests you can use wood blocks drill holes in them and put these straws in they sell special straws that are made specifically for mason bees they're just the right size they're just the right length for the mason bees now you can use PVC pipes and then stick all your straws in there there the picture up there on the top at the top picture you'll see you can see that Plexiglas one of the master gardeners from Washington County Ron spindle he makes those and he is really into mason bees and he's got a lot of videos on television so if you excuse me on the Internet so if you go to Washington County Master Gardeners and and Google mason bees you will find a lot of his videos on the mason bees very interesting things he makes these clears with clear plastics that he can take them apart and look and actually see what the bees are doing okay if you want to attract them yes you have to have the nests but there's a few other things you need to have too you need have food they need to have food mason bees don't go very far away from home honey bees can fly up to 4 or 5 miles away from their hives in order to find their food supply but the mason bees they usually stay within 300 feet of their nest so they're going to be pollinating your plants not the neighbors in the next block they're gonna pollinate your plants that's what they're really made for they prefer composite flowers the ones that have the tiny tiny little middles inside of them but they will come to any flowers you happen to have in your yard the mason bees when the mason bees come out right now pretty soon or hopefully we had a colder winter so we're not sure exactly when they're going to come out depending on how cold it does stay this spring of this month but you'll notice your Andromeda Bush those of you that have Pires japonica bushes are almost starting to bloom when those bloom open you can almost bet that that's the time that your mason bees are gonna come out of their nest and start their pollinating they really like the blueberry blossoms it's really good if you have blueberries and you want to make sure that they get a lot of pollinating pollinating done definitely have some mason bees and have them close to your blueberry plants because they really like the shape of the little blueberry flower they also need mud they use the mud in their nest building and luckily we have clay mud here because they don't like sandy silt mud it doesn't hold together good enough they can't make a little mud plug and back there in that display you will see I have some mason bees I have some mud plugs I have some pollen balls I have everything that you will see inside of a mason bee nest back there so before you leave today don't forget to go back and look at the display the if you don't have mud which we all have mud I think actually we don't all have mud one master gardener that lives on has plants everywhere and she didn't have any much she had to come to my house to get some dirt but the rest of us I think we all have enough clay for these little guys now mason bees versus honeybees ones not better than the other one they just have their own capabilities their own jobs to do but I'm going to tell you a few things that's very special about mason bees mason bees are active at a lower temperature than honeybees true Oregonians they don't care that it's a little cold out there they don't care that it's a little rainy out there there to come out anyway but the honeybees know they're not from around here never um you're up they said I want to stay warm I want to stay inside of my hive and I'm gonna make some honey that's all I want to do right now so like I said as soon as the temperature reaches about 50 degrees for several days at a time you'll probably start seeing the mason bees come out which probably won't see the head of these yet there's still be in their hives mason bees they are really hard workers they were are early risers they'll get up in the morning they go and they work work work and they work until nighttime and then they're done for the day honey bees yeah they don't care they don't want to get up early they don't want to stay up late they have other things to do in the hive and I'm gonna tell you why that why the mason bees work so hard during the day too they also like I mentioned they stick closer to home they're not gonna fly away they're gonna stay closer to home now it doesn't take as many mason bees to pollinate a fruit tree as it does a honey bee how many mason bees do you think it takes to pollinate a fruit tree three any other guesses 500 well she's closer 7 it takes only 7 mason bees to pollinate how many honey bees does it take to pollinate 1752 how about 545 honeybees to pollinate a fruit tree and the reason why is because what the female does what her lifecycle is this is the lifecycle of a mason bee in spring she will wake up early now the male's come out first this is really interesting if you have a straw and the straws are usually about six inches long they are six inches long the ones that you purchase the female nature is so smart the female knows that she's going to that the male's want to come out first so she's gonna make sure that the eggs that she lays at the very back of the straw are gonna be females and the lay eggs she lays at the very front of the straws are gonna be males cuz the male's wake up first they come out they didn't need to do a little bit of eating before they mate then mating a curse and then the males die that's all they're good for sorry about that umm three or four days after mating the females going to start her nesting process she's gonna go get that mud that you have for her hopefully not very far away from the nest site she's gonna get Fleck that come back to her straw or her nest wherever it is and she's gonna put a little bit of mud in the bottom then she's going to go visit flowers and this is why she stays awake all day long she's gonna go to 75 to 150 flowers in one day one very busy girl and then she'll collect all of these flowers and chill she'll make about 15 to 20 trips to the nest site to the flowers to the nest site after she collects that Minnie then she'll lay an egg inside of there so she's already got the pollen she's got the nectar and now she laid her egg in there then she's gonna go collect a little bit more mud and make another little mud plug because remember these are solitary bees they're each individual bee so she doesn't have to have them all together she wants them all separated she can lay 30 to 40 eggs in her lifetime and that's about all the days that she will lives about 40 days and then she's done so inside of this little straw inside of their little nest after a few days the egg will hatch and then the larvae it catches into the larvae and the larvae will feed on that nectar in that pollen inside of that tube for about ten days and then they will spin a cocoon and inside of the cocoon they will start to pupate and through the summer they will transform themselves from the larval stage to the adult bee and by summer's end every bee inside of there is full-grown if you were to take your if you were to take them out and undo the little cocoon you would see a full-sized beat okay they stay in that and that state until the next spring when they come back out again and do it all over now they do have a few problems one of them is called a chrome beum mite and what happens is when the female is out flying around from flower to flower these little mites land on her body and then when she goes inside of the straws to lay her eggs or to put the pollen and nectar in there they come off of her body well what these little mites do is when the larvae is in there and they want to eat the pol and eat the nectar that's in there for them the mite if the mite population is too high then the little larvae aren't going to have anything to eat they will die and your you won't have a beat come out there's another little insect called a chow sad wasp it's very very minut and you almost need the magnifying glass to see one back there they're pretty ingenious they can actually sometimes even lay eggs through the straw that's why we have a heavy covering for the straw and then a lighter covering inside these little shell said wasps lay an egg inside of the cocoon and then the egg hatches out and eats from the inside out so you also do not have a viable B that comes out so you can make raising mason bees really simple or you can make it very complicated how many of you have ever cleaned your bees as anybody okay few of you and they all have yet orange Edge's on amazing okay if you want it to be simple go purchase your nest boxes buy your nest boxes put some straws in there put them out by the plants that you want to pollinate and leave them okay if you want to get a little bit more fun at the end of autumn maybe so no I would say October or November you can pull the inner straw out of your nest box unwrap it and you will see cocoons like that you will see all the little bees now remember there is a full-grown adult be inside every one of those you take them out and your your handout has a little bit information about this there's also more information from the Master Gardeners you you can take them and you can make it either a really nice bleach solution and you're actually washing those cocoons and you're washing them to get all those little mites off of them and after you do that then you take them you put them in a box you can put them in your refrigerator if your husband or wife doesn't mind or you can put them out in an unheated shed and wait till next spring and about this time of year you can bring them out set them underneath your nest boxes and as soon as they emerge they'll have all these straws ready to go into again now if you want to do it simply here's the thing to do so how many of you have straws right now okay sometimes some of those straws have viable bees in them some of them do not and when the bees come out the female is going to clean out that straw and go right back in so they're going to be coming out going in coming out going in you're not gonna know which straws were viable and which straws were not viable so I want you to go home right now take a magic marker a colored magic marker and put a little tiny dot on every one of your straws just like it shows in the picture then when summer comes along and you look at your straws any straw that still has your blue dot on it that was not a viable straw no bees came out of that straw so you can remove that straw and put a new straw in its place ready for next year now remember how I said that the bees will the female can lay 30 to 40 eggs in her lifetime in a six inch straw you'll probably have four females and three emails maybe four males so just think if you have four females in one straw and they each can lay thirty eggs you're gonna have to have a few more straws next year so if you do if you have some straws filled now you might want to get a few more straws put some extra out there because they need a lot of room excuse me they need a lot of room so right now purchase your bees if you haven't you can purchase them in straws and some places will sell them in little boxes already clean cocoons set out your nest boxes if you have them put in the refrigerator refrigerator or in the shed you can put them outside about now also mark your plugs if you want to and if you have the clean ones take them out of storage and get ready for them so watch the fun begin and that is the end or is it just the beginning [Applause] [Applause] you