Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House Review

The Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House is tear drop shaped and made using bamboo. The bee house is hung in place with the narrower side of the tear drop at the top.

Gardener’s Supply Company is known for creating products for varying agricultural uses. Their products are designed and tested in an in house lab. They are made to support your gardening activities. The various products from this trusted manufacturer have contributed to the success of numerous gardener and home owners.

For more information on high quality mason bee houses, be sure to check out Crown Bees, a highly reputed company specializing in mason and wild bees in the United States.

About the Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House

The Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House is made using naturally grown bamboo, which is suitable for mason bees as they take to it naturally. Having a bee house can contribute a lot towards boosting your garden’s productivity. Mason bees are rather calm, rarely sting and do more pollinating activity than honey bees. A single mason bee visits more than 15 times the number of flowers a honey bee visits in a day. Additionally, mason bees become active in late winter, earlier than honey bees.

This mason bee house measures  5-¾ x 10 x 5-¾ inches. It can easily houses a large amount of mason bees.

Design

In addition to housing useful mason bees, the Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House also has decorative functions. It is beautifully made and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The curves of the teardrop shape of the mason bee house is a welcome break from the straight lines and sharp corners that are abundant in modern environments. This mason bee house adds beauty to your home and garden without posing a risk of painful bee stings (mason bees only resort to stinging when squeezed or wet).

Placement

The location of the Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House is important in how successful it will be. It is best to hang the bee house in your garden or somewhere under the eaves of your house. Protection from wind and rain is important for the shelter to be excellent for mason bees. At the same time, you should put the mason bee house in a southern-facing location to benefit from the benefits of early morning sun. Be sure to have the bee house a few feet from the ground so predators cannot reach it easily. For additional security for your mason bees, you can have a mesh protecting the bee house so predators such as birds find it difficult to eat bees or their eggs.

Female mason bees find it easy to make their cells in this bee house. They fill the bamboo tubes with eggs, nectar and pollen for the hatched larvae to feed on. For successive generations of mason bees, you could provide a mud source nearby. There are a number of mud sources available commercially. If you cannot purchase one of those, you can make your own patch of wet earth and the mason bees will be happy with it. Mason bees use mud to partition and plug the bamboo tubes into cells for their eggs.

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• Natural materials that quickly attract mason bees are used in the making of this bee house. These materials also make it easy for mason bees to build cells and store supplies for larvae when it hatches from the eggs.
• The bamboo pipes used in the mason bee house are of different sizes. They create an irregular pattern at the face of the mason bee house. Mason bees are known to find their specific tubes easily when the entrances are in an irregular pattern.
• This mason bee house is easy to hang and stays securely in place. It does not have much room for birds to perch on it and wreck havoc on the nest of your mason bees. If you put it a few feet above the ground – say at eye level – it will provide a secure home for mason bees.

Cons

• This mason bee house has a rather short lifespan. It is built to last between 1 and 2 years. This means costs to mason beekeepers since they have to purchase a new bee house for their bees periodically.
• The short lifespan of the mason bee house also translates into having to harvest cocoons and move them to a new mason bee house every 1-2 years. If beekeepers do not know how to migrate mason bees using cocoons, or if they mismanage the process, they are forced to purchase stock repeatedly!
• There is no instruction manual or guide included in the package of this bee house. If you are an amateur, this mason bee house may prove troublesome to you.

 

Further Thoughts

The Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House is not perfect, though it is well worth considering despite its limited weaknesses. It is easy to use with a little research. Gardener’s Supply Company has a very detailed guide about using the bee house on the company website, though it is a shame that this guide wasn’t included in the package itself. There are also other very informative articles on the website. They are a great read for beekeepers that want to learn about mason bees and how to keep them successfully.

Your garden benefits a lot from the pollination of these mason bees. This mason bee house can be used in both rural and urban environments where there is a garden. Plant a few flowering plants such as black-eyed susans near the bee house. They go a long way towards providing pollen and nectar sources for mason bees during hard times.

Conclusion

The Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House makes a great gift for your friend or relative venturing into mason beekeeping. It is very practical for gardeners who have some early blooming plants in their dirt patches. The bee house works well for both professionals and amateur mason beekeepers. Some reading up about mason bees and how they work is needed however – though that is easy to get in these modern times.

Do you own the Gardener’s Supply Company Mason Bee House? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of it.

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