Some of my early memories as a child are about making little insect cages out of cork and straight pins, and using them for hospice or rescue for injured bugs that I found.  And crying over the one that drowned in the drop of honey I put in there for food.

As a sensitive person you can probably relate! If you have a story of your own about trying to save and protect the earth and her creatures, I would love to read it! Add it in the comments section below.

Recently I learned about a kind of bee that lives up to and goes beyond the reputation of “busy as a bee,” but it doesn’t sting. All the Mason bee does is pollinate.

You have probably heard the more and more dire accounts of the failing bee population around the US, and likely spreading to other parts of the world, as a result of our human unconsciousness about partnering with the earth. Without the pollination of bees, 80% of the plants on the earth will fail.

When I heard about Mason bees I decided to do my part, and become a bee keeper. Well, not exactly…no white suit and screened hat and fumes for me, and sadly no honey. But it is easy and fun, I have learned, to raise Mason bees.

My bees are sleeping in my refrigerator as we speak. I ordered a “Starter Kit” from Knox Cellars   which includes my bees’ future home, and a supply of hibernating bees. My bees are still growing as larvae in their cardboard tubes, where their mother carefully placed each of them last summer, as an egg settled in a food mass. Then she plugged the space with mud and went on to set up another little chamber for the next egg. And so on until the tube was full. Then she plugged the door closed.

She laid the female eggs near the back of each tube, and the males in front. In case of marauders the guys will get eaten first… In the Mason Bee world it is all about protecting the females. Altogether I have about 70 bees right now, more or less, if all is well in there. (They won’t get out! I won’t be opening the fridge to a horde of flying bees!)

So when the temperature warms up outside, I will follow the instructions sent by Knox Cellars. I will attach my bee house to the wall of my house, in a sunny spot facing southeast, bring out my bees, and watch what happens!

I also ordered a bumble bee house (bees not included), because bumblebees too need support and protection. I have a kind of shamanic connection with bumble bees that I wrote about in a newsletter article here: https://www.intuitivementoring.com/being-so-sensitive

Here is how the Knox people describe Mason bees:

The Orchard Mason Bee, Blue Orchard Bee, Orchard Bee and Mason Bee are all common names for Osmia lignaria, a north American native pollinating bee that is a wonderfully effective pollinator of early spring crops like cherry, plum, prune, Asian pear, raspberry and blueberries. In fact they are such generalist feeders that they will very effectively pollinate just about any pollen bearing flower that blooms in the early spring.

Studies done in netted orchards show that 250 female orchard mason bees can pollinate apples as effectively as 50,000 honey bees. They will work in cooler weather and more dampness than honeybees and they are absolutely non-aggressive. They seldom wander very far from home and are easy to raise. This makes them the perfect pollinator for home gardens and boutique orchards. Mason bees don’t make honey. They make great apples and cherries.

Mason bees are classified as solitary gregarious bees. This means that they have no real social interaction in the sense that a honeybee population would but mason bees do like to nest near each other. I like to refer to this as the New York Condo Consciousness. They are very happy all nesting in a huge colony but they don’t actually talk to their neighbors.

What does this mean for you? It means that mason bees don’t protect their eggs after they lay them. They actually don’t care about you or your children at all so they are the perfect backyard bee. The male has no stinger. The female has one but uses it so seldom that there is a common belief that mason bees can’t sting. The females can but rarely do unless they are in a real bind.

I have been stung when I slapped one on my arm once and was stung another time when I was opening a cocoon to show the bees to a customer. For some reason the female in the cocoon was perturbed that I interrupted her hibernation by cutting open the cocoon and pulling her out. Go Figure.

Join me! Bee a partner with the earth!