Carrying on with opening up Bamboo tubes, I remove the Solitary Bee cocoons that were laid last spring. By removing them, I tend to them and make sure mites wont be an issue when they emerge. There are also little Wasps that have taken over some of the cocoons.
The family these bees belong to is Megachilidae in the genus Osmia and do not make bee hives. Instead they just collect pollen and make homes with mud for their offspring to live and make the change into full Bees by the next spring.
I open the tubes using numerous tools, a flat head screw driver, wire cutters and a bamboo skewer to remove the cocoons once the tube is open. Next year it should be alot easier using the Bee boards im building. But for this year it was tedious and time consuming opening the tubes without harming the Bees inside.
I am amazed how many Bees fit into the tubes along with the smaller tubes. Its hard to believe they fit into some of these little tubes. And filling the backs of the Bamboo reeds was not expected, nor was them filling in the voids in the large Bamboo reeds the smaller reeds rested in. Good to know theres enough mud around here to make a bunch of homes. Looking forward to about a month from now when they should emerge if the weather, hoping frosts wont take them out. Watching the weather forecasts to keep an eye on a sudden frost that may hurt them. Thinking I may not release them all at the same time, just in case we get another freeze between late February and April.
More info on these Bees can be found on their Wikipedia page.
Links to other parts in this series..
