Glad it was helpful! We will start working our honey bees at the ranch soon too. Thanks for watching.

Your set up sounds amazing. Good luck with your bees. I’m sure they will be real happy in the habitat you created for them. Thanks for watching!

How exciting! The bees are lucky to have you. Hope you have great success with your bee house and gardens. Thanks for watching!!

Thank you for watching! We started raising Mason Bees for the same reasons and they have been amazing pollinators. This year we have been fortunate to have bumblebees, honeybees, leaf cutter bees & Mason bees all around our gardens. I’m sure your garden will benefit from the Mason bees too!

We are so glad you enjoyed the video. We are getting ready to put out another video soon. That bird guard is really good to have. We thought we could take it down but caught the hummingbirds trying to eat our bee larvae. Now the guard stays on there. Good luck with your project!! Thanks for watching!!

That’s great! You’ll love having them. Thanks for watching & commenting! Good luck with your bees & gardens.

We love seeing them too! Thanks for watching & commenting.

Thanks for the comment. The native bees have been a great addition to our urban garden. Honeybees are both fascinating and humbling. We are learning more and more every year. Best of luck to you! Thanks for watching.

We are so happy to read your comment! We have really been enjoying our bee house. They are fun to watch and we see them all over our garden. We hope you get the same enjoyment out of yours! Thanks for watching. 🐝

Thank you for watching! We hope you found it helpful.

Thanks for watching and commenting. We are so glad you liked the video. Stay tuned! More Bee videos to come.

Thank you so much!! We are so glad you found it helpful. Thank you for watching and commenting.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. Good luck with your mason bees. Thanks for watching & commenting.

Glad you liked it! Thanks for the 👍🏻

@@OurWeekendHomestead go

Thanks for watching!! We are so glad you liked the video. We will be having more videos with our bees throughout the season.

Glad you liked it! Good luck with your bees!! Thanks for the comment.

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Glad you liked the video! Thanks for subscribing. Appreciate the support!

Sometimes you don’t see the bees but if you look closely you might see little signs that they’ve been back to the home. Hopefully a few stuck around and you get some benefits from them 🌻Thanks for watching! 🌱

That’s great! Now they have a nice home in your backyard. They sure are a great addition to the garden! Thanks for watching & commenting.

That's a great idea! Maybe we can do that in a future video. Thanks for watching the channel!

That’s so exciting!! We did a little sun mapping on our property to find the best spot. How we did this was we drew a simple map of the area where we thought we wanted to hang the bee house. Then we went out every few hours and checked where the sun was hitting and marked it on the map. This helped us see where the shade fell as well. Just remember the sun is lower in the winter and higher in the summer. Let us know how it works out.

Glad you found it helpful. Hope you get some Mason bees to take up residence. Good luck & thanks for watching & commenting.

Question: I am in zone /8-9 in Southern Mississippi. Is it especially hard to attract masons in hot, humid weather?@@OurWeekendHomestead

Thanks for watching!

That’s good to know. How exciting. Good luck with your bees & gardens. Thanks for watching & commenting.

Thanks for watching!

When temperatures are above 50 consistently & flowers are blooming. Thanks for watching!!

Thanks for watching!

You should be fine. They are just starting to ship out Leafcutter bees also know as summer bees. We have a few more honey bee videos coming out in the next few weeks. I hope this helps. Thank you for watching our channel.

@@OurWeekendHomestead what do I watch to attract or should I order them. I am in Reno, NV. Thanks again!

We purchased ours from CrownBees. They also have a product called Invitabee. It’s an attractant for bees. It also helps you as you introduce the cocoon in the bee house.

Hi there! Glad you found us!! We only bought a small amount of reeds to start with. You can put as many as you like. It’s totally customizable. We have yet to see any battles. The bees are docile. You can have native & introduced in the same house no problem. Good luck with your gardens.

Interesting idea. Thanks for sharing and watching!

That was something we thought about too! Surprisingly, they don’t bother us at all. We tend the garden & swim in the pool and haven’t had any trouble with them. The garden sure did benefit from having them though. You should give it a try. Thanks for watching & commenting. We would love to hear how it goes!!🐝

We are working on videos for both our solitary and honey bees. 🐝 Stay tuned!

@@OurWeekendHomestead yay! Thank you!!!

When you buy the reeds one end should be closed. The open end faces out. The bees lay eggs in the reeds and once it’s filled the bees fill or cap the reed. The type of material that the bee uses depends on the type of bee. Mason bees use mud and leaf cutter bees use leafs. I hope this helps. Thanks for watching our videos!

Thank you for the question. We surveyed our property and felt that this was the perfect place to install the bee houses. We love the way they look and enjoy all the benefits of having solitary bees in our gardens. We now have two bee houses in this location and we are not bothered by the bees at all. The nice thing is you can install them wherever you like and if you change your mind they can easily be moved. Good luck with your solitary bee journey. Thanks for watching & commenting. We sure do appreciate it!

Crown Bees is where we got the bird guard. There is a link in the video description that should take you there. Thanks for watching!

That’s a great question. You can put it on a tree or post or other structure. You just want to give it shade from the afternoon sun. How exciting! We wish you success with your bees & garden. Let us know how it goes. Thanks for watching & commenting!!

No, wait til next season and then move it if need be. Thanks for watching & commenting. Good luck with your bees.

Great question! If there are Mason bees in the area they definitely could make their home in your bee house. Buying them helps ensure we have plenty of bees to pollinate our gardens. Thank you for watching & commenting.

The solitary bees lay larva which turns into a cocoon. You then harvest them for the following year.

We buy our Mason & Leaf cutter bees online from Crown bees. Our honey bees we buy from a local beekeeper and pick them up. This has worked well for us. Hope this helps.

Great question! We harvest the cocoons out of our reeds each year and store them in the refrigerator until the temperature is correct to release them. Then we put them out in the bee house to hatch. Hope this helps. Thanks for watching!

@@OurWeekendHomestead So in the wild, they burrow through the dried mud to get out?

Yes, they do. Next week we will receive 200 leafcutter bees. Their reeds are smaller and they seal them up with small pieces of leaves. We will be putting together a video on the leafcutters real soon. Thanks for the questions. Good luck with your bees!

We bought it from Crown Bees. Sorry that the link was broken. Thank you for letting us know. We have fixed that now and the new link is in the details section of our video. tinyurl.com/ju477kwc

Thanks! Do you find birds try to get at the bees? Is the guard successful? I bought it after seeing this but it hasn’t come yet so I put up some temporary chicken wire until it comes!

@@athenalevesque We have tons of birds in our yards. They just love it here. We too were afraid they might go after the bee house. So far they have not, but we do feel confident the bee guard will protect them. Good luck with your bees!

Congratulations on getting a bee house! The timing depends on what you are doing. If you are releasing new bees here are some simple guidelines. For Mason Bees daytime temps should be above 55F (13C). Open blooms should be within 300 sq ft (100 sq.m). They prefer 8mm nesting materials. For Leafcutters Bees daytime temps should be above 75F (24C). Open blooms should be within 300 sq ft (100 sq.m). They prefer 6mm nesting materials. I hope this helps. Good luck!

@@OurWeekendHomestead thank you 👍

Not always. You harvest the cocoons at the end of the season and put them away for next year. If you are lite on cocoons you may want to by some more. I normal always buy more because I'm a little lazy and want to be sure to get all that we can. They made a big difference in our garden last year. Thanks for your question.

I’m sorry you are having trouble. There are different packages on their site. Some complete sets others are just houses & reeds. The cocoons usually ship dependent upon the season & temperature. Ours did not come in the reeds. They were just the cocoons & we bought the humidifier box to keep the cocoons in until our temps were right to put them out in the bee house. We usually order our Mason bees first & then take delivery of the leaf cutters a month or so later. It sounds like if they haven’t shipped yet & you ordered bees with the kit, it’s probably because they aren’t ready to “wake up” yet or the conditions aren’t right for shipping safely. Don’t give up. It’s so worth having them in the garden. We are ordering more bees from Crown bees for our property as I type this. I found some info on their website that might be helpful: Please note: Bees ship separately from products, so they will not arrive in the same package unless otherwise specified! At this time, we can only ship bees to the United States and Canada. We can not ship bees to P.O. Boxes. For the health of the bees, we only ship mason bee cocoons on Mondays (Feb - April) to ensure they do not get stuck in transit over the weekend. We recommend picking a shipping date that is two weeks ahead of when you expect your spring plants to bloom. We’d love to hear how it all turns out & hope it gets resolved for you & you get the bees in your gardens soon. Thanks for reaching out.

These bees are solitary bees and they do not swarm or sting. We rarely see them. What we do see are huge garden harvest’s & beautiful flowers in our gardens from their amazing pollination skills.

@@OurWeekendHomestead Thank you! I've learned something new.

That’s definitely not the experience we have had. I’m so sorry you had trouble. We order every year from Crown Bees with absolutely no issues. We just received our Mason Bees a few weeks ago and our leafcutters are coming next week. Hopefully you can find some leafcutter bees to fill your houses or better yet maybe some wild ones will make their home in your bees houses!

@Our Weekend Homestead I'm glad you had a better experience than I did! I'm really frustrated that they did not insure I received my bees after spending almost $200 for the kit! They just gave up on trying to get my order out. 1st shipment, FedEx lost and 2nd shipment I received a notification that my order had shipped. When it didn't arrive and I let them know, they informed me it never shipped. I asked to have someone higher up in management contact me but that didn't happen either. I watched hours of videos on bees before ordering and was really exciting to have bees to my garden that is in full bloom! This entire experience has been so disappointing!

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