Gardening

With mason bees, the first to hatch and emerge are the smaller males. They fly around and collect pollen and smatter it around the hatching grounds, so that the females have something to eat when they hatch a few days later.

This lady looks ready to greet the world! 🐝❤️

The bees are loving this warm weather, not to mention all the flowers in bloom!

Navigating the world of finance by day, pondering its flaws by night. ETH Maxi

This is so cool! How does one get started with this? Little kit you can buy online or did you make the tubings?

You can definitely buy kits online or at your local garden store. And it's very easy to get started. You just need a little house/structure, tubes (which you can make or buy - we buy, because it's simpler), and your first batch of cocoons (which are usually available in the early Spring). Then you bring them in the late fall, collect and clean the cocoons and store them in your fridge until it's warm enough to put then out in the Spring.

I had a friend give us 20 cocoons 6 or 7 years ago, and they propagate like crazy. We give away half of ours every year and still end up setting out 100+ cocoons/bees each Spring.

I want to do this so much now! 😂😂😂

It’s actually kind of fun. We have a little “harvest party” with friends every year where we just sit around and drink beers and chat, while we peel open all the straws to gather the cocoons. It gotten competitive in recent years (whose straws have the most cocoons)! 😂