Last Saturday I attended the free workshop on mason bees down at the Wild Rose Garden Centre, hosted by Rose from J&R Farm in Nanaimo. That night we opened the cocoon boxes and hung the house on our bedroom balcony.

The house and tubes are really cute, and we are excited to begin our season with bees. I went out to check on the house this morning and one of the cocoon boxes had blown out of the triangular hole in the top of the house, so we taped it back up on the side. I checked the tubes but there were no signs of bees despite several of the cocoons already being empty. We started to worry that maybe they had flown away or been snatched by a bird, but as I stood on the balcony a few hours later I saw a bee fly towards the house – when I looked he wasn’t actually flying into the house, but into a small hole in the deck board about 12″ to the left of the house haha. Hopefully as the rest of the females emerge from their cocoons and begin to use the tubes rather than holes in the deck!

^ The hole in the centre of the photo is where they are setting up shop, the fancy house remains empty as of today. We hope it will be busy soon!