It's interesting to see bees using the Pilkington design as a snooze box every day. Hard for one to crawl over the other to get out though. A bit like caving.
Two more mason cocoons have hatched in its release chamber. Five of nine are left. I am going to find a way to mark last year's nests, so that I know which ones are new and which ones have failed. In previous years I had no idea.
Tough weather for bees at the moment. Not a great moment to emerge into the world, with high winds and rain and cold nights. Hopefully they will hold off for a week or so.
There are four, new red mason bee channels just started this week in the Pilkington boxes - piles of pollen.
I think everyone has now hatched from the Schwegler box - all the mud caps are broken. I was going to mark last year's caps, but they are all gone, so there is no need. Out of interest, I did try marker pen, but it didn't work. I didn't want to use acrylic paint. Maybe chalk paint might be the thing.
I'm so interested in all the bees seemingly snoozing on the west (sunny, warm) side of the box, lots of them together. There are now large dead flies in some of the channels. It will be interesting to see if / how they kick it out. I imagine it should be fairly straight forward for a bee to do the spring cleaning.
I opened the greenhouse yesterday and there was a loud buzz of male mason bees taking flight. I'd forgotten I'd stored the last of the inhabited tubes in there and they must have finally hatched out. Just in time for the apple blossom too
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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