Mason Bee Clay Palette

 My father-in-law is a master gardener who has a way with mason bees. He makes his own condos and puts them up on the southeast side of the garage. On Sunday the females were incredibly busy laying eggs and plugging the holes. Look at all the colors of clay they have found in the neighborhood. Isn't it amazing! You can see a couple of bees in the tunnel ends as well. This year it took  a while before the females hatched because of the cool weather. The males have been out for weeks, but we had cold, windy weather and the blossoms of my FIL's crap apple tree were blown off before the females emerged. I really noticed how much larger the females are when I saw one land on the sidewalk the other day. I was so used to seeing the little males that I had to do a double take to realize it was a female mason bee.

 Luckily, we have had a reprieve in the weather and the females are pollinating their little hearts out!

 Here you can see the roof overhang protects the condos nicely.

As you can see, there are about 6 condos here and they are filling up fast. The ones closer to the east are filling up first.

Snowy Seedy Saturday

Happy Seedy Saturday! Did you go? What did you buy? I bought pussywillows and just a few seeds from Seeds of Victoria: A "Sooty Black" Dianthus, Vervain, Sweet Cicely, Malva Sylvestris "Magic Hollyhocks", and Caucasian Germander. The flower seeds were on for half price, so I was filled with double happiness.

I admired the fruit trees and bought a bunch of excellent second hand gardening books. Woot! It was bloody cold and the snowflakes were falling, but the garden chat was good. Too bad it's so crowded in there. I'm curious to see what it will be like next year in the new building.

Brian Campbell was saying that crap apple trees are excellent for bees because they contain more pollen than other trees and that pollen has more protein than other tree blossoms. Plant more crap apples, people! I love them. I bought some stewed crab apples at the winter market last week and I'll tell you what's good: drink the juice with a slug of vodka. Oh ya. I eat the crab apples sans spirits on my yogurt in the morning.

Brian will be out looking for bumble bee queens soon for a new EYA project with wild pollinators. Stay tuned for more details. Believe it or not, the queens will be emerging soon and before you know it the mason bees will be out there searching for crap apple blossoms.