Hornfaced Mason Bee, Mason Bees in General

blueboy1977

11 years ago

I just ordered some Hornfaced Mason Bees today and Im wondering if any one in the Houston Tx area/Gulf Coast Counties has tried to raise them? For that matter, mason bees in general? Are there native Mason Bees on the Gulf Coast states????

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Comments (3)

Charlie
11 years ago
I heard from a guy in Alabama that says he has mason bees. I have them populating my boxes without purchase in northern VA. Mason bee habitat is wooded areas of North America and around homes. Mason Bees are native to almost the entire continental USA and Southern Canada. There are about 140 species of solitary bees in North America. All of these species polinate. One way to determine what you have naturally living in your area is to build a mason bee box and see what inhabits it. I suggest that you drill some 5/16" holes and some smaller ones. The mason bees will select the 5/16" holes, while smaller species will select the smaller holes.
Charlie
11 years ago
I did a little research after I posted. Here is what I found, "Bringing Mason bees from a different climatic region can present problems in two ways. Firstly, Blue Orchard Mason bees from lower latitudes (e.g. south Texas, which fly February to March) develop more slowly as they have a longer pre-pupal stages and require temperatures of at least 75 degrees to develop. If you transplant them to a cooler area some bees will fail to reach maturity. If you move Orchard Mason bees from higher latitudes (e.g. southern Canada, which fly April to May) to a warmer region they will mature before ambient temperatures start to decline and will have to use up body fat reserves until temperatures drop enough so they can enter hibernation. They will now be in a depleted state and may starve over winter or emerge in a weakened condition come spring."
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Thanks! I've always like bees but this new hobby-I can see it already-is going to make me more of a bee guy than ever. Like I said, there are huge numbers of bumblebees present at that site. It's just the very early season I must ensure. Do the big guys plant any other early-flowering plants in and around their haskap to aid and assist the bumblebees in this early-season timeframe? That's something I've been considering. When I mostly see them, it's the late-summer asters, goldenrods. etc. I wonder what pollinates Canada anemone flowers. I should look that up. we've got a ton of that plant growing around there, and it, of course, is a very early bloomer. +oM ps....OK, just looked it up....Canada anemone is visited by Halictid and Andrenid bees, and by Syrphid flys, so presumably, these little guys are doing the pollination. Not at all sure what role they might play with haskap blooms.
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Comments (22)
Bees become fixated, when a nectar source opens, the bees concentrate on that source, becoming fixed on that and little else until the bloom period for that plant is over. If your blossoms open a few days after your neighbor’s blossoms, by the time your neighbor’s blossoms have finished, your blossoms are half over, and old blossoms do not pollinate well, if at all. If your statement were true, nothing in my back yard except the orange tree and then the queen's wreath would be pollinated, because blooms are prolific and bloom periods overlap. A certain proportion of the bees, the foragers, are always looking for the next good spot and recruiting other bees to come harvest what they have discovered. I have watched bees go from the creosote in full bloom to the bok choi blossoms a few feet away, and from the orange blossoms to the alyssum to the tomatillos. Those are foragers ... the ones waddling from orange blossom to orange blossom are the gatherers. On any given collection run a gatherer bee usually stays with a certain kind of flower, but a forager's "waggle dance" can recruit that bee to a different resource for the next run.
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Comments (1)
I keep solitary bees myself in a hive I have in my backyard and several "tenants" have moved in without filling out applications first. :) I started out with Japanese Hornfaced bees (Osmia Cornifrons) and ended up with some Masons and a few others I haven't identified yet. Some Masons can have a "honey bee" look to them at times like the Red Mason bee. My Japanese Hornfaces can be mistaken for a small honeybee at first glance. And even though they are imported, they are starting to become the bee of choice among some commercial apple growers so I am sure they have made their way into the feral population in some capacity. :) But basically it sounds like it is a solitary bee, so it should be just fine. The nice thing about solitary bees is that they all seem to get along in the same housing unit with no apparent problems [ we humans should take on their example :) ]. Their requirements are very similar as well, so that helps if you are raising them. If you do a Google Image search on eitber the Red Mason Bee or Osmia Cornifrons (Japanese Hornfaced Bee), you should be able to find some examples of them for comparison to the one you saw. Well, hope that helps. Cheers.
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BEES: Blue Orchard Mason vs. Japanese Hornfaced
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Comments (2)
John, you may want to re-ask your question in a pollination forum; perhas you'll get a better response there. I'm not sure we have very many Japaneese hornface bee experts here. Here's a generally informative link about the bee in question: http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/japhornface.pdf I see it's solitary bee, used primarily as a pollinator for apple trees at present. Seems to me, finding a "supplier" of this bee could be challenging (especially in the east). Good luck with that...
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blueboy1977
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks for the response. I ordered 20 horn faced mason bees Mon with a small wooden house for them. I guess I will take my chances with them and if nothing else hopefully some locals will take up residence in the house. When I ordered them from Crown Bees he said they should do fine in my area. Only time will tell. Thanks again for the response.

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Hornfaced Mason Bee, Mason Bees in General

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Charlie

Charlie

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blueboy1977
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Hornfaced Mason Bee, Mason Bees in General

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Charlie

Charlie

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blueboy1977Original Author

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blueboy1977
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