Its hard to say if I already have enough homes for my solitary bees. This spring will be different from others, as many more females were produced this year. The adult mason bee decides what ratio of sexes it will produce. And I had alot of males in the previous years, this was due to inadequate housing size. So by building these boards the homes are more preferable to the laying bees.
My recent trip to the hardware store had me picking up more 1 bys of pine. I went with three different sizes, 1x6,1x8 and 1×10. I find I can snugly fit 6 holes in the 1x6 and about 8 holes the 1x10s. Though my chop saw does not work well with the 1x10s so I may stick with the smaller 1x6s.
To the left I still have a stack of unfinished bee boards. Those are the 1x8s and I find them somewhere in the middle for sizing and not really great for making bee boards out of, unless I use a larger router bit.
My wood router makes easy work of running channels into each board. These half circles it cuts make a full circle when combined.
The bit inside of the router turns the pine boards into a powder. Much more fine than sawdust. Due to this I always wear a facemask.
The adult female Mason bees prefer homes at least six inches long. Allowing her to lay dozens of eggs in a single hole. A stack of these boards when completely filled would hold a few hundred bees. 1x6s are seen in the picture above.
The larger boards which are 1x10s give me space to add another two channels. Thorough I find it hard to work with such a large board, I'd prefer using the 1x6s and lose a couple channels. Maybe when I have a large chop saw I'd reconsider these larger boards.
What I like about using these boards instead of the old 2x4 and bamboo homes is how easy it is to open and clean these boards out. Soon I will be harvesting the cocoons from this year and storing them until spring time next year. Then I will release them as I did last year.
They are not perfect, some channels are a little longer than others. And occasionally I go too far and make one of the channels to deep.
I used to do all of this routing in my garage. But with the dust build up it was too much. So now a days I cut them right outside the garage in the open air. Still leaves a big mess in the drive way.. haha it will wash away when a good rain happens.
So at this point I plan to finish the 1x8s. And then clean and sand down the channels. If I have extra I will take some to the farm I am working on. Along with some to go where I will be doing the honey bee keeping. Spreading out these homes and taking care of them every year should bring a boom to the local mason bee population.
