Raising solitary bees for the last four or so years I have been learning what works and what does not. Mason bees use mud to seal their homes, and they do it quite well.. So well they tend to seal my bee boards to whatever they are placed on, and this is an problem. Because when I go to remove them and box them up to protect from the wasps sometimes the boards separate. When that happens it endangers the larva and breaches their home. So I came up with an idea, use steel wire to bind the homes together.
Another issue I had to deal with last year was not all of the stacks of bee homes would fit in the storage boxes. And having to break apart a few bee homes to make them fit is not the way I want to do things. So by sizing the cluster of boards to my storage boxes and then binding them I always have just enough to fit in the bin without being too tall.
Meet the humble roll of steel wire, it has many uses but today it will be used for solitary bee keeping.
I start by doing the front of the homes, I cut some wire to size and then lay it underneath. Finding how much wire you need takes some practice and sizing it up before cutting.
Once the first wire loop is tightened I move onto the back, giving it support in the front and the back. I could probably just do one in the middle, but rather do two for better support.
Its hard to tell when the wire is tight, sometimes it just breaks. But when it starts cutting into the wood I know its getting tense. I also see if I can place a finger in the gap and if I cannot then its tight enough.
I tighten them by first hand binding, adding a few twists making sure I know what direction I rotated. In this case its counter clockwise.
Once hand tight I put a screw driver in the loop, add a few more counter clockwise twists. And then start turning the screw driver counter clockwise to tighten it more than I could do by hand.
With both wire loops tightened the bee boards should hold together much better.
After the season is done and its time to harvest the homes I can just unwind them or cut the wires.
The loops for the screw driver can be seen above. I would place it inside and twist, carefully not to break the wire. Though sometimes it just happens.
I take any remaining wire and tie them together, giving me a handle to carry. Once the bees fill up all the homes it will increase by alot in weight. Mud sure weighs alot.. haha
Making sure they fit in the bins after the bees are done, to protect them from wasps.
We can see inside the homes, there are channels cut using a router to the back but not completely through.
Without the wire the boards easily come apart, so binding them should help out.
Adding just enough twists takes some practice. But noticing the wire cutting into the wood and checking out the gap in the boards works well.
Sometimes I mess up and overtighten snapping the wire. Sometimes I can fix it but other times I need a fresh cut wire.
Many of my boards last year had pollen mites all over them. Not a problem for my bees as I harvested the cocoons, washed them and stored them to kill the mites. But the boards seem to be harder to remove those little pollen mites. If I do not remove them they will cling to be bees and act like ticks to them and effect their health.
I tried to wash them using diluted spearmint essential oil in water baths though it did not work for all of them, so I had to toss a bunch. Sucks but I do not want to spread bee pests.
From the ones I washed I had a dozen or so that were saved, so I gathered them and added some wire to hold them together. I can place them on top of the large stacks, since there is room between them and the ceiling of where their shelf is.
The handle I made using extra wire. Its pretty rough on the hands, will probably need to wear gloves to pick them up when all full of pollen, mason bee larva and mud.
I made around a dozen of these homes, should house thousands of bee cocoons. Though right now only the males are out so its not time for the homes to be in use. It was just good to get them out of the way so when the female queens are ready they can start making homes right away. Otherwise they may leave the area.
A few days ago I posted about how I placed the harvested cocoons out in the open to hatch. I was expecting to wait a week or two for them to emerge. But to my surprise just 24 hours later I saw signs of them hatching. Normally these bees take a week or longer once out of the refrigerator to hatch. Maybe they can sense the time of year and tell they are running late, and in a hurry. Normally our winters last longer but it would seem with the weather reports we are done with the freezes, seems the bees agree and are in a hurry to spawn.
Its basically bee poop, and it was not there before I placed them out. I also saw one chewing its way out so they seem to be already active. Should not be long now until the males all emerge, then the females will comes out of their cocoons as well and breed. Then my bee homes should be quite busy with bee activity. Looking forward to that a few weeks from now, or at this rate even sooner.