Inviting Mason Bees Into the Garden
Around here, The Japanese Beetle Plague 2018 is still in full force, as is an apparent appearance of the Where's Waldo? of tomato plants, the disgusting horn worm (even though I'm just guessing because I haven't found him yet). So, while we put our eight year old on Japanese beetle eradication research duties, we thought it would be a good idea to invite a new insect into our garden: Mason bees. Based on the small amount of reading I've done, I've learned mason bees are not carpenter bees. They (males) don't sting; females do but it has been described as no more unpleasant than a mosquito bite (I'll let you know the first time one stings me). Mason bees are great pollinators, which is why we built three houses to attract them. There are kits you can buy online but Rob built some using scrap 2x4s we had laying around. I don't anticipate any bees living in our houses this year because we didn't hang them up until well into the summer. Typically...