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Mason Bee cocoons Clean, candled, healthy! Ready to pollinate! - $20 (NW Seattle)
DAYTON near 92ND
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I still have lots of mason bees available for all your pollination needs! Its time to release them! This is a last call before I turn them loose! These are the native mason bees that I raise with lots of genetic diversity. I have been raising orchard mason bees for many years and I also clean and inspect them before storing them in a humidity controlled drawer in my fridge.
This year I got a late start getting the bees out since I am having my house worked on and have not had time to promote them.
I live in East Ballard/Lower Phinney/West Woodland/Greenwood/Freelard neighborhoods and am willing to have the bees picked up in Greenwood or to meet up within 10 miles of where I am currently residing to deliver the bee cocoons to people who promise to release them in a suitable area so they thrive. They need wet clayey mud near where they will be nesting to create mason bees for next year. They will not use nesting materials if there is no clayey mud nearby. Maintaining mud near the nesting box is easy.
Native Mason bees are gentle solitary bees that do not sting or make honey. They are very important for all of the foods we love that require pollination. We would not be here were it not for native bees! The pollinate more flowers per day than honey bees. They also come out earlier in the season than honey bees. Without mason bees the early blooming fruits would not be pollinated.
25 bees $20
50 bees $38
100 bees $70
200 bees $120
If you would like more please let me know how many and I will let you know the price.
Please message me if you are interested with your phone number and the best times to reach you, what neighborhood you are in and how many bees you would like. I find the craigslist messaging system to be a bit awkward in that I don't always see the messages in a timely way. I will check my messages every afternoon. I can deliver afternoons to dark. Its a bonus (for me) if you live near a park so I can go on a walk after delivering your bees since it is so beautiful out!
I can meet and deliver bees within 10 miles of where I live which is the border of Ballard and Phinney Ridge. Preferably at a halfway point between where you are and where I am. I can deliver in the afternoons til dark. Keep in mind that if your car is too warm inside they may hatch before you want them to. When I am out delivering, I keep an icepack in my car under the boxes I am delivering if I have more than one drop off, just so they don't wake up too soon.
All orders contain male and female bees! I almost always add a couple of extra bees to each order!
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READ THE BELOW IF YOU KNOW NOTHING OF MASON BEES BUT ARE INTERESTED IN RELEASING SOME THIS YEAR TO HELP SAVE OUR NATIVE BEES AND TO HELP POLLINATE BLUEBERRIES AND MORE!!!
The only reason I added all of the information below to this listing is that many people, this year seems to have a lot of questions that I hopefully just answered again below. You do not need to read all of this below unless you have a lot of questions or no clue as to why you would want mason bees and not honeybees.
Please ignore all of the typos and grammatical errors as I wrote this on my phone fairly quickly. I will still field as many questions as I can or point you to sources of great information on raising mason bees. Really, they are very easy if you choose the right nesting materials.
The reason you want to clean the bees (in OCTOBER) is because it is important to remove all of anything that could damage the cocoons. There are great videos online about how to clean mason bees once they are finished.
The bees I have are native to the Pacific Northwest and I started raising them not only because they are the best pollinators for the blueberries and other fruits I am growing but also because the native bees need all the help they can get!
Honey bees are not native but were brought here for the honey they make and the very important pollination that they and other insects like mason bees do.
Mason bees pollinate more flowers per day by far than honeybees do. One of the other reasons honeybees do not pollinate as well as mason bees is because they have sticky or wet hairs whereas the mason bees have dry hairs and transfer more pollen to other flowers that need pollen to create more or larger fruits. My garden is full of pollinator plants and hummingbird plants.
I am not a professional bee keeper but somehow since starting keeping mason bees I have had a lot of success on how many I have left for the past few years. It was a lot of trial and error. I did a bunch of research in order to figure out what to do and it is really easy to raise mason bees once you know what you need.
You need either reeds or blocks that come apart to clean (I would still use parchment paper liner or paper liners in the drilled and cut wooden blocks-because of the tiny parasitic wasp that can get between the blocks) Or the cardboard tubes with paper inserts and plugs on one end.
There should be some wet clayey mud nearby where you have the nesting materials.
The nesting materials can be in large cans, Large Tubes that are covered in the back and have an eave over them or a "bee house" which is basically just something to hold the reeds, blocks or other nesting choices you make.
I do not find bamboo to bee a good choice for reeds as it is really difficult to clean the bees. It is easy to build your own bee house. There should be shelter from the rain and wind so a overhang or eave is a good choice. You can attach the bee house to your house or a post or anywhere that is at least 5-6 feet off the ground. They like morning sun, so a south facing entrance would be ideal although I have had success by having them facing south west and mine are mostly 9 feet off the ground on the edge of a deck under some wood planks. I just make simple bee houses for the blocks and reeds out of wood. When I notice that tubes are getting filled, I go out at night and remove the filled tubes and put them in a box or fine mesh bag to keep them away from birds, squirrels or other predators that would eat them. I replace the tubes or liners I removed that are full of baby bee larvae that will be spinning their protective cocoons and eating their pollen loaf until September when they start hibernating as full grown bees with fresh ones and here we are. I do not expect everyone will do what I do to raise healthy bees as I know if might seem like a lot at first as I once did. It really is easier than it sounds.
I usually buy my supplies at Crown Bees in Woodenville or online. They have been very helpful to me over the years when I had questions plus they also sell bees for much more than what I am selling them for but they do it professionally as their business.
I am an artist and environmentalist wildlife gardener and more who just has this side habit of raising mason bees to help out where I can.
The mason bees I have for sale are cleaned, healthy, inspected (candled) and ready to pollinate blueberries, cherries, almonds and pretty much anything you need pollinated!
Mason bees are easy and fun to watch them do their magic. They are metallic, a bit furry on the sides and have cute antennas that stick out. Once released, on top of their nesting material home they emerge early in the morning sun when it is above 50F out even when it is drizzling rain! The males emerge first and once they wake up they fly back and forth in front of where they emerged to imprint on their home. They take off and come back when the females emerge and mate and then the male's job is done! Then the females do an insane amount of amazing work to gather mud and pollen (while pollinating 1000s of flowers). She brings a pollen ball back to a tube she selects as her own where she already placed a clayey/mud at the very end of the tube to create the space She then places the pollen ball at the back of the tube/hole and then lays a female egg. She then gathers some clayey mud from nearby to seal the female egg into the chamber with its pollen. The last cells she lays eggs in are male. I find it fascinating that they can choose the sex of the egg they are laying. The females are larger than the males.
I can meet within 10 miles or so from Ballard/Phinney Ridge to bring them to you in the afternoons to early evenings.
Please leave a message with how many you would like to purchase and the best way to reach you. I cannot do early morning drop offs or deliveries. In your email I will need your phone number and the best day/time to reach you plus the best time day and place where to deliver the bees.
It’s best to keep them in your fridge until you are ready to release them. Right now is a perfect time to release them if you have your nesting materials set up near some clayey mud.
I always attach a release box with a small hole on top of the nesting materials in my bee boxes where I think they will do best in my yard. Usually a release box at my place consists of a small box with a 8-10 mm hole cut out of it so the bees can emerge.
The reason I clean the bees instead of selling the tubes I see people selling is because :if you let them hatch naturally they are more likely to have pollen mites so they won’t be able to fly well or worse yet have parasites which will eat them and the next generation of bees. If you buy those tubes from someone you might luck out and have zero problems. They are less expensive but they might have parasites or fungus which can spread to the next generation of mason bees, and not as many will survive the next season.
I charge money for them is because (I really need the money) to purchase more supplies for the bee homes plus it takes me a significant amout time and energy to clean and raise healthy mason bees. They take up a 1/4 of the fridge to my partner’s dismay. Also, I have helped to get many people started in raising these beneficial native bees.
These bees are ready to go! Please contact me if you would like to purchase some or if you have questions.
I think I have about 3000! I will adjust this number after I count them.
I wear a double mask when I meet you and remain socially distant.
All orders contain male and female bees!
25 bees $20
50 bees $38
100 bees $70
If you would like more please let me know how many and I will let you know the price.
Friendly advice FYI (I have never seen the grasshopper eating wasps) And I am not sure if you clean your bees in October if you do not clean your bees you will likely lose most of your mason bees if you do not remove them from the tubing as there is a new parasite wiping them out that needs to be removed in October. I know it sounds gross, but its really easy to do once you have done it once. This past year was the first year I have had this new parasite called the Houdini fly. It doesn't infect the mason bees or eat them but instead starves them by eating their pollen loaves before they can become bees. The Houdini fly is from Europe and was first noticed in 2020 by Crown bee customers who cleaned their bees last year. If you do a search on Houdini Fly and Crown bees they have a great short informative YouTube video on this pest. The Houdini fly is so tiny like a fruit fly... This year I will be doing everything I can to kill these flies before they get near the bee nesting.