The Crafty Cultivator

I don’t remember if I wrote about the quick Mason Bee house that I made earlier this spring or not, but I checked on it the other day and look!!!

  
Some of the holes are starting to get blocked off! 

In the holes that mama-mason bee is still working on, you can see the goodies she is collecting for her little babies. I am so so glad I decided to drill some holes in a block of cedar and put it out on my fence. This project cost me nothing but some time and effort. The cedar is a 6×8 left over from a fence or deck project from my fiancé’s work, and so is the piece of cedar deck board that makes up the roof. Then I just borrowed his drill and made a bunch of different sized holes and screwed the whole thing up into the fence in the side yard where there isn’t much activity.

I totally recommend doing the same! Mason bees are solitary and really look more like flies than bees. You probably won’t even notice all their hard work pollinating your garden, but seeing the holes in this mason bee house slowly being filled is kind of rewarding in a weird/I don’t know how to explain it way.

Mason bees play a large roll in pollination in this part of the world. Here is the Wikipedia link to more information about them if you are interested.