Keep Your Wild Bee House Safe for Bees

It’s not news to anyone that honey bee populations are declining due to disease, pests, loss of habitat, pesticides and other issues. But most of us have a lot to learn about native bees, which I’ve seen many more of in my garden this year—and you may have too. North America is home to about 4,000 native bee species, many with names that reflect their nest-building styles and/or habits such as leafcutter bees, mason bees, cuckoo bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees.

Often so small as to go unnoticed, native bees of various sizes and colors are out there busily foraging and pollinating plants. But unlike honey bees, most native bees are more solitary than social. Meaning, they don’t live in hives or work together as a group. Instead, they create nests of their own in all kinds of oddball places; mud holes, abandoned burrows, fallen trees and tunnel-like spaces such as hollow plant stems and holes made by woodpeckers and bugs.

Sure, you might see a bunch of native bees nesting in the same small area, but they’re still going to keep mostly to themselves even though they’re neighbors. That kind of I’ll-do-my-thing-you-do-yours style of communal living community has inspired the creation of all sorts of native bee boxes—the cuter ones dubbed houses or hotels. In an effort to help native bees, well-meaning people, including me, have gone out and bought (or built) a bee house of one kind or another. Once I nailed the house up, I did some research to better understand how to care for it and found out that, having a nesting spot for native bees can be a great thing if you manage it properly. But things can go terribly wrong if you don’t.

Just like human dwellings, unkempt bee houses can be gross places that play host to viruses, pests, fungi, bacteria and other harmful things. If you want to help keep the bees you’ve invited to stay safe and healthy, here’s what you need to know. Bee dwellings are designed to replicate the different sorts of nesting sites many native bees like, so they’re usually some kind of a wooden structure with a whole bunch of hollow tubes made of reeds, bamboo, heavy cardboard or other tunnel-like material in one area. Other spaces are stocked with blocks with holes of various widths and depths drilled in them, and maybe even some pinecones. (To learn more about native bees and how to build your own bee house, read this University of Minnesota Bee Lab article.

Bees nest and lay eggs in different ways but, in general, they mate in the spring and summer and the females lay their eggs inside whatever cavity or tunnel she’s made or found. Often, the mom bee divides the nest into separate brood cells, starting at the back of the cavity or tunnel and moving outward, so that each egg is laid in its own separate space with just enough pollen to feed the emerging larva. Sections are sealed with a bit of mud, leaves, flowers or whatever else she’s got on hand until, finally, she reaches the end of the tunnel and caps the end with more of the same. I’ve watched bees doing this at our bee box all summer, and it’s been an amazing thing to see, all those tubes packed with different-colored material, bees-to-be tucked snugly inside.

As you can imagine, those tubes and holes are going to get pretty mucked up by summer’s end. Here’s the problem: If you bought a cheap, but cute, little bee house like mine to see how this whole native bee thing works, those tubes and blocks are probably glued in so you can’t take them out to clean them. It’s fine to reuse a house two years in a row, but after that, those bargain houses need to be thrown away since they can’t be cleaned. My bee house was $14, so I’m fine with having made that initial investment in bee housing. Now that I’ve seen how bees really use it, I plan to ask my handy husband, Mike, to help me build a nicer bee box that we can clean next year.

Whether you use an inexpensive box that you throw away after a couple of years, buy a high-quality one (Crown Bees is a good source) or make your own, there are a few things you can do as winter approaches to help protect the bees-to-be. Sometime in October, take your bee house down and put it in an unheated shed or garage so that hungry birds and other critters won’t snack on what’s inside. In early spring, when the first flowers arrive, put the bee box inside a cardboard or plastic container with a small hole cut in the top or side. Find a spot outside that’s protected from rain and wind and allow the bees some time to emerge and fly out of the box through the hole. It’s best to have a fresh bee house already waiting nearby for them to start using.

Once the bees are all gone, which might take a couple of months, depending on the type of bees that have nested, you can clean the box if it’s cleanable. If you’d like to learn more about native bees, have a look at local author Heather Holm’s fantastic books Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide and Pollinators of Native Plants.

Awesome Things About Ants

Hello Everyday Gardener readers. Welcome to Livin’ Thing. As you can see, I’ve renamed my blog and successfully transported my past posts, and you, to this lovely new space where I plan to write about gardening, of course, but also all sorts of other livin’ things, including humans. Rest assured, though,that I do not plan to write about dieting, as a neighbor friend feared when she misread my new blog title as Livin’ THIN. Ha! No.

No, for this post I’d like to talk about ants. As a Master Gardener, I often volunteer to answer questions at our booth at various events, like the State Fair and farmers markets. People ask about all sorts of different things, but mostly they want to know how to kill stuff: gophers, moles, voles, rabbits and bugs of all types, especially ants. People really seem to hate ants, and I don’t get that because, with the exception of horrors like fire ants, they are actually quite beneficial, harmless and fascinating to watch. Also, I’ve seen the movie A Bug’s Life too many times to count and, well, if that doesn’t change your perspective on ants, nothing will.

A little ant feeling like King of the Moss World! Credit: Flagstaffotos_Wikimedia

But let me try. Here are just a few reasons why ants should be considered friends rather than pests to get rid of:

They are Fun and Interesting to Watch
My husband Mike and I spend quite a bit of time watching ants while drinking wine and eating supper in the backyard. Sometimes we conduct “experiments” to see what they’ll do. Like the time we put a small dollop of hummus on a low table and watched as one ant found it and took a teeny tiny bit back to the colony. Within minutes a long line of ants was marching up the table leg from a crack in the patio, each one gathering a portion of hummus nearly too small for us to see before carrying it back down the table leg to the colony below. On and on they went, and we imagined them putting a call out underground that went something like: “OMG, you would not BELIEVE what we found out there, you guys!” By morning, almost all of the hummus was gone, but there were still a few ants working to get every last bit. We hope they enjoyed it. Also, further totally unscientific testing revealed those ants preferred mashed potatoes over hummus if given the choice.