A friend of mine crowed on Facebook that she just received her mason bees in the mail. Naturally, I had to learn more. It turns out that you can rent them from rentmasonbees.com. They come to you in early spring with a bee house, a nesting block, 50-60 mason bee cocoons and a box with return postage for when you send them back in the fall. What a nifty idea!
Why mason bees? They pollinate your garden for you. They aren’t aggressive. (You really have to mess with a mason bee a lot to get stung because they’re naturally gentle creatures.) They’re super low maintenance, since you’re not dealing with honey. Just hang the box and let them do their thing. They’re also a great learning experience, and a great way to help the planet.
Why rent them? Well, each mason bee does the work of 100 honeybees. And at the end of the season, 50 mason bees can produce 500 eggs. When you send them back free of charge, the company will clean each cocoon and sterilize each nesting block to free them of predators and then safely keep them in hibernation under just the right conditions. The next season, they send these healthy bees to farmers, who need 1000 bees per acre to pollinate their crops, which, in turn, feed all of us.
What’s not to love about this program? If you’re interested, you better hurry, though, because they ship the last mason bees of the season on April 26th. So get your bee on!
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude! Read my book! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
The View from a Drawbridge 
After they’ve turned from pupae into bees, how do you get them back in the box? Or do they just lay their eggs in there?
My mom is a big fan of mason bees. She acquired a little wooden house for them. “–That where they hold their lodge meetings?” I asked. She is used to this… Me, I’m worried about those giant hornets–I hope they got all of them last year, but I fear they didn’t.
They lay their eggs in there. As for Murder Hornets, I’m with you. But I wouldn’t lose sleep over them just yet.
This is a wonderful write up about Rent Mason Bees! Thank you for taking the time to write and share!
-Thyra
Rent Mason Bees
You’re very welcome! And we did wind up renting some this year. But I’m a really afraid they flown the coop. Does that happen often?
Nice sharee