Immediately outside her front door, Beth Rose communes with bees. She's not rewarded with honey for her hospitality, but her fruit bowl is piled high, and she's never felt the pain of a sting.
Rose, a master gardener who lives on six acres in Aloha, began her relationship with the friendly mason bees about 12 years ago when she noticed what she thought were flies in her barn. Not so unusual, except it was late winter, not summer. Curiosity edged her to look closer.
"I saw they were bees," she says. Once they caught her attention, she realized they were wriggling in and out of holes around the hinges that hold up the barn door. It wasn't much of an effort to figure out they were a species (Osmia lignaria) of native bees that have become more important -- or at least more appreciated -- since the serious decline of honeybees, and more recently, bumblebees.
"In the '70s, we started having a problem with the honeybee population," says Pat Smith, also a master gardener. "Mason bees became the buzzwords."
In the intervening years, these earnest pollinators -- which have a particular, but by no means exclusive, affinity for fruit trees -- have been welcomed by both serious and casual gardeners.
"Most people want them because they're friendly or because they want their fruit trees pollinated," says Rose, who likes them for both reasons.
In the 30 to 60 days of its life, a female orchard mason bee will pollinate thousands upon thousands of flowers. According to Rose, one or two of the insects can pollinate an entire mature fruit tree. Since you can't have fruit without fertilization and you can't have fertilization without pollination, the importance is clear.
But you've got to have them to feel the benefit. Since the bees are native, they'll sometimes be buzzing around and you won't know it if you're not familiar with their flylike appearance. They aren't too particular about where they nest, as long as holes are not too large. Cavities made by woodpeckers and insects or in wood piles or siding will do just fine.
To hedge the odds, some people buy or make nesting boxes, which are simply wood blocks drilled with 5/16-inch-diameter holes, or containers such as PVC pipe, soup cans or cottage cheese containers filled with straws.
Both Smith and Rose teach classes on mason bees and agree raising them can be as complicated or simple as you want to make it. The cheapest way, of course, is to do nothing or hang a nest box (under an eave on the east or south side of your house) and hope they'll find their way to your garden. Alternately, you can buy straws or tubes already filled with cocoons. But they've got to be outside in time for the waiting adult bees to come out and meet and greet your fruit trees, berries and whatever ornamentals are blooming.
"The first flower they'll encounter," Smith says, "is Pieris japonica. Forsythia is next, and pretty soon the apples start popping out. There's a continuous food supply for them from the first part of March toward the middle or end of May when it gets too hot for them."
As they're busily pollinating flowers, the females don't care that they're doing us such a great favor. Their only concern is gathering the pollen and nectar necessary to feed the larvae that hatch from eggs laid between walls made of mud -- another material the single-minded moms must haul back and forth, like going to the grocery store for a teenage boy.
But without realizing it, the mother bees are carrying predatory mites as well as food into the nest. After two or three years, the mites get numerous enough to eat the packets of pollen and nectar deposited by the females, and there's no food left for the babies. That's where the complicated part comes in. Real enthusiasts will remove each cocoon and wash it.
"Last winter, I sat at my kitchen table unwrapping each paper straw (each straw holds about half a dozen cocoons) -- hundreds of them," Rose says. "It took 10 or 12 hours. My husband thought I was crazy."
Smith cleans his cocoons, too, but says you don't have to if you're willing to replace nesting boxes every three years.
"It can be expensive and time-consuming," he says, "but it's fun."
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FUN FACTS
Females decide whether to lay a female or male egg
. A female lays about three to four male eggs for every two females because males emerge from the nest first and are more likely to end up as dinner for a predator. Since the males have no other job except to fertilize the females, they stick around the entry waiting for a female to emerge.
It takes the female about 15 to 35 trips
-- with 75 flower visits per trip -- to collect enough pollen and nectar to feed one larva. She lays approximately 30 eggs in her lifetime.
Each tube has five to six eggs,
each separated by a mud wall. It takes about 10 trips back and forth for mud to make one wall.
Mason bees are not picky
about where they nest as long as the holes are the right size. They've been known to make their home in the grounded hole of shop and garage electrical sockets.
It takes 250 to 750 orchard mason bees
to pollinate an acre of apples, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. It would take 60,000 to 120,000 honeybees to cover the same area. (Mason bees tend to stick closer to home while honeybees range farther afield and visit more plants.)
SOURCES
Al's Garden Center
Sherwood, 503-726-1162
Woodburn, 503-981-1245
Gresham, 503-491-0771
Backyard Bird Shop
Seven Portland-area l
Locations
Cornell Farm
503-292-9895
Dennis' Seven Dees
Portland, 503-777-1421
Lake Oswego, 503-636-4660
Cedar Hills, 503-297-1058
Farmington Gardens
503-649-4568
Portland Nursery
5050 S.E. Stark St.
503-231-5050
9000 S.E. Division St.
503-788-9000
Shorty's Garden & Home
Vancouver
360-892-7880
RESOURCES:
CLASSES:
Home Orchard Society's Fruit Propagation Fair, Saturday, March 6,
Washington County Fair Complex, additional information coming soon at HOS Web site:
Oregon Zoo and Xerces Society Pollinator Workshop
, Oregon Zoo, Friday, May 14, additional information and registration form available on the Oregon Zoo Web site:
, click on Conservation
WEB SITES:
VIDEOS
"In the Garden With Mike Darcy" video on
Two more videos on building your own mason bee house:
BOOKS
The Orchard Mason Bee," by Brian L. Griffin: Available at
, 503-657-5399
PRICE RANGE:
Mason bee nest boxes come in a wide range of prices, from about $15 for a basic wood block with holes to about $35 for fancier designs with more holes. Prices for straws loaded with five to seven hibernating bees vary from $3.50 a straw at Backyard Bird Shop up to about $15. Two will get you started. As the bees come back to lay eggs, they'll begin filling the other holes.