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.

I just read through this 3 year forum. It's nice to see great questions and answers. I work with mason bees on the commercial side. A couple of points. - unless you have chalkbrood, there really is no point to washing your mason bees. If you have harvested your cocoons and separated out the cocoons from the mites/mud/pollen balls, that's all that is needed. Any residual mite on the cocoons doesn't harm anything. The first foraging trip to flowers has mites on the mason bee again. If you have chalkbrood, wash with bleach. Our website has great pictures on pests and processes. Look at http://www.crownbees.com/home-gardner/harvesting for more information. - There are a variety of straws/inserts/reeds to be found on the internet. We have a new one out, the 'EasyTear' that doesn't need an insert, you can tell if it's used by a mason bee, and tears open easily. Reeds are also a good option as well. Lastly, a few questions asked about other mason bees beyond the Blue Orchard Bee. We're helping people be successful with the Japanese Orchard Bee in the east coast and are on the lookout to help others find/manage more. Osmia Algaia (Berry bee) in Oregon is a good one, and there are a few other Blueberry bees found. We're looking to help understand location, crops that can be supported, and nesting practices for each bee. Native bees are vital to pollination. Continue to give your bees away to your friends and help them succeed! Dave Hunter, Owner Crown Bees http://www.crownbees.com Here is a link that might be useful: Crown Bees

I have a house also and had to protect it with a "hail wire" cover to prevent birds from eating the bees. In GA you are probably okay leaving it on the porch through the winter. In colder areas, it is often advisable to move it to an unheated shed for the winter.

If you spray for carpenter bees, you will kill all the native mason bees you attract to your nesting spaces! So that is something huge to consider. If you have an out building that you do not spray, that might be a consideration - however you will probably still kill off that population. Now is the time to work on changing over your carpenter bee habits. Fill each hole with diatomaceous earth or borax. Then take a dowel and plug each hole up. That will stop new bees from emerging. Spraying in the holes will not totally eliminate the baby bees in there, only the first. There will be several in each hole. After you do that, then you can put up the bee houses for your carpenter bees. It really does work wonderfully well. Each fall, just take your Carpenter Bee houses down and clean out the tubes and kill the baby bees inside if you don't want them. Wash them well to remove bee fermones. Hang them again for next year. It's the existing fermones of baby bees that attract the new adult bees (and the babies also come back as adults) to lay more babies in your house. I had some good luck keeping the bees out by simply regularly washing my home and stopping up bee holes, and removing all mud dauber tubes (after hatching) and using this method for carpenter bees. We did get a lot of them when I moved here.