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.

Why is it important to retrieve the cocoons and cleaning house each year? The emerging bee have been inside that tube for the whole year: From egg to larva to pupa to adult bee; once the bee have emerge there will be a lot of debris left behind in that hole: empty cocoons, faces, mud and a lot parasites, mainly pollen mites. For the bees to reproduce in great numbers is important to start out with a clean nest each year. To break the cycle you need to hang a new house next to the old one and partly blocking the entrance of the old one to discourage their re-entry. Most of the bees will pick-up nest in the new house by virtue of been clean, therefore more attractive. The only way to retrieve the cocoons is to unfurl or cut open the tubes, been careful not to damage the cocoons. Most years timing their emergence is all guess work; I would not recommend to hold them back beyond April 1st.

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.

response at http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3970296/best-time-to-harvest-mason-bee-cocoons