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Old 06-08-2019, 05:09 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
alan_m alan_m is offline
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Default Bee hotels, best time for cleaning?

On 06/08/2019 12:49, Bob Williams wrote:
On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 23:42:08 +0100, alan_m wrote:

On 03/08/2019 11:30, Bob Williams wrote:
I have a small bee hotel which has been used for the last couple of
years by a number of solitary bees.

What is the best time to clean it? In other words, when is the interval
between hatching and the next deposit of eggs?


There is no dormant time. Mason bees will hatch and start using any
vacated tubes immediately for the next generation which will take the
year to pupate/hatch.

Mason bees lay more than one egg in each tube. They lay an egg and
supply a source of food (pollen) and then block off the chamber with mud
or chewed leaf. They then repeat the process until they get to the end
of the tube. The eggs at the end will be males which emerge first and
usually hang around until the females emerge.

Any tubes in your bee hotel may be occupied by more than one species of
solitary bee. They will have different active periods with perhaps one
species being active for perhaps 4 weeks in early spring and another
with active period in June/July.


Last year, about 20% of the tubes were used. This year it's more like
80%, which is great.

I'm guessing from what you say above, there is no good time to clean the
old debris, parasites etc. Or are the pupae tolerant of a little
disturbance in the winter?


When the Oxford Bee Company was still in existence they sold cardboard
tubes with paper liners for mason bees. I believe their aim was to sell
the empty tubes to the public and buy back full tubes (for onward sale
to commercial growers). When the grubs had pupated (after eggs hatching
and eating the supplied pollen as food) they would have removed the
paper liner and removed the pupa. They then would have sold on the pupa
in a suitable container. In a bee hotel there is probably no liner to
the tubes to remove but it doesn't stop you removing all the tubes
(first noting which end is the front), removing all the accumulated
detritus and then replacing the tubes.

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