Orchard Bees

This gentle, black bee is native to most of the continental U.S. It is a pollinator of fruit trees and flowers, and farmers and gardners try to encourage them to live and breed in their gardens and farms. This bee cannot excavate its own holes in trees or wood and does not live in hives. It relies on others to provide nesting sites, such as old beetle holes, spaces between house shingles, and even old nail holes. Because of this, these bees will readily utilize a bee "house" if one is available. These are non-aggressive bees and will not provide a danger to yards with pets or children as long as the bees are treated gently.

Mason bees will hibernate during the winter and emerge in the spring from their nesting holes. After mating, the female will build a nest, filling it with pollen and nectar. She will then lay one egg amid the food storage and close up the chamber with a plug of mud. The females continue this exhausting process until the entire nesting site is filled with nesting chambers. A final masonry plug is used to plug the hole opening, and then the female is off again to look for a new hole to fill with nesting chambers. This behavior continues until June, when adult mason bees will die.

However, the new bees are hatching and developing inside the nesting chambers. The egg hatches into larva, and then consumes the food its mother left for it. It will then spin a cocoon and transform into a pupa. By the end of the summer, a complete adult bee will have grown. The adult bee will hibernate in that same hole through the winter and will not emerge until the next spring. When spring arrives, the mason bee will finally exit the mud-sealed nesting chamber to begin the cycle all over again.