A few weeks ago I was working from home and went out to work on the back garden over my lunch. I managed to catch the mason bees emerging from their nests. Mason bees are a native pollinator that lays a single egg in a hole and then blocks it up with clay mud to protect the larvae as it matures. They will happily use a bee house like mine that’s just holes drilled into a block of wood. These bees generally emerge around the same time so I got a bunch of pictures of different bees chewing their way out. You can see the jaws of the bee in the lower left picture working on the hole. If you stood quietly next to the house, you could hear all kinds of chewing as they worked their way out.
These bees are great pollinators and the best sort to have for blueberries. They also won’t sting and don’t do any hole construction like carpenter bees do. They are also unfairly fuzzy and adorable.
Click through to Flickr to see 70+ images of the bees emerging.
