Mason Bee Property Ideas: How To Make A Bee Residence

Mason Bees Are Native Pollinators!

Mason Bee Home Plans: Producing a bee property is a basic woodworking undertaking that takes just a number of minutes to construct, and producing a bee residence is a great task for using a couple of pieces of salvaged lumber and scrap wood. A Mason Bee Property is also a enjoyable venture to make with kids, specifically after they can view the bees create their nest in a venture that they produced themselves.

Mason Bees are all-natural pollinators. They are also solitary and unlike the honey bee, mason bees do not dwell in colonies. Alternatively, female mason bees do all of the perform themselves, searching for out natural cracks and crevices to lay their eggs such as hollow twigs and the abandoned holes bored out by beetles.

Female Mason Bees will readily move into the tunnels bored into this minor bee residence to lay their eggs. However they do not live in hives, groups of female mason bees nest collectively, and they don’t seem to be to thoughts the business from their neighbors. The eggs continue to be dormant via the fall and winter, and offspring emerge in the spring to pollinate plants

Mason Bee Property Strategies and Photos by the Writer

Issues You Want:

4″ x 4″ x 14″ Pine Submit

five/16″ Drill Bit

six” x 6″ x 3/four” thick Pine or Hardwood board

Simple Woodworking Resources & Skills The Mason Bee House is a basic structure produced from a 4×4 pine submit. The actual dimension and dimensions of the the bee home are not crucial, so use no matter what pieces of recycled lumber or scrap wood are available. If you do not have a chunky post, basically laminate a handful of pine boards with each other. The wider the boards, the deeper you can drill the holes for the nesting tunnels.

I utilized a piece of weathered pine publish that is about 14″ extended. Do not use cedar or redwood, which is naturally insect-resistant and may discourage mason bees from setting up residence.

The top of the pine publish is reduce at a 22-1/2 degree angle to type a sloped roof to shed the rain. My electrical power miter box is not big adequate to lower all of the way by way of the post, so I completed the reduce with a hand noticed.

The 6″ x six” roof was reduce from a piece of 3/four” thick cherry, recycled from an previous shelf unit that was destined for the landfill. The back edge is cut at the same 22-one/two degree angle to match the slope of the roof.

For a uniform pattern and a neat appearance, get a number of minutes to lay out the areas of the holes prior to drilling. I commenced by measuring to uncover the middle of the front side of the post (the shortest side following the sloped bevel reduce for the roof), and then drawing a center line down the length of the pine board. Marking the center at the two the best and the bottom aided guarantee that the line is placed down the center of the post.

Subsequent, I measured 3/four” in from every single side, once again marking each the best and bottom of the publish, and then drawing an additional set of lines for the other two rows of holes.

Commencing at the top of the submit, I measured down two” and manufactured a mark on the center line to indicate the location for the initial row of holes. Making use of a square, I transferred the initial mark to the other two lines, marking three spots for the 1st row of holes.

Measuring down one” from the initial row, I repeated the approach to mark the locations for each of the holes in the second row. This approach continued right up until I reached the final row, which is about 1-one/2″ up from the bottom of the submit.

The Mason Bees are not fussy about the patterns for the holes, and the lay out lines are purely for visual appeal. Rather than measuring and marking each hole location, you could use a small piece of peg board (with evenly spaced holes) as a template for evenly spacing and marking the spots for the holes.

A drill press makes rapid operate of drilling out the 24 holes in this edition of the Mason Bee Home, but a hand-held drill will perform just fine also.

Drill the holes as deep as attainable, utilizing a 5/16″ diameter drill bit. The female bees favor laying their eggs in deep tunnels, and all of the holes are at least 3-1/two deep. Numerous Mason Bee house programs attribute wider (deeper) types making it possible for for longer tunnels, and the deeper the depth of the nest box, the much better for the Mason Bees.

Use a small piece of sandpaper wrapped all around a piece of dowel (or a pencil) to clean up the edges of the freshly drilled holes.

If you have a longer five/sixteen” drill bit, contemplate drilling the holes all of the way via the publish. Then, lower a “backer board” to match the back of the submit, and attach it to the back of the bee house with a handful of weather-resistant screws. The removable back area can make it straightforward to clean out the debris from tunnels following the younger Mason Bees leave the nest.

The roof for the Mason Bee house was lower from a piece of cherry wood that I salvaged from an outdated shelf unit. Reduce into a 6″ x six” square, the roof overhangs the submit by 1″ on either side, and virtually two” more than the front of the Bee House. Four climate-resistant nails hold the roof in spot.

Though the Mason Bee Property was created from salvaged pieces of weathered wood, the finished piece looked much better following a rapid sanding to soften the sharp edges, smooth out the noticed cuts and to round more than the corners of the post. A normal picture frame hanger can make it simple to hang the finished bee house.

Hang your new mason bee house in a sunny spot in the backyard. My new bee residence is mounted on the south-facing wall of our garden shed and is ready to host the next generation of mason bees.

There are above 300 various species of Mason Bee. The two of the most typical species of Mason Bees located in North America are the Blue Orchard Bee and the Horn-Faced Bee, while the Red Mason Bee is frequent throughout Europe.

Smaller sized than a honey bee, these small bees dwell for only 6 to eight weeks, but can check out and pollinate above 1,000 blooms every single day of their quick lives.

Mason Bees hardly ever sting, creating them welcomed guests to the garden.

Blue Orchard Mason Bee ~ Photo by Robert Engelhardt (Public Domain)

Preserve the flowers blooming! Pollinators include which includes bees, birds, butterflies, bats, beetles and other animals.

Garden Photo by the Author

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