The inflight magazine article was called “15 Fascinating Facts: Cancun, Mexico.” Fact number 5 was about the town of Tulum, which is a two-hour drive from Cancun and the only city the Maya built by the sea. Its inhabitants bred a strain of bees with no stingers, and it was headquarters for the richest Mayan honey and beeswax merchants.

Fast forward to the present time and we see that beekeeping in America dates back to the early colonial period when British settlers first brought honeybees to the colonies. Some swarms escaped and established themselves in the wild; these free-living bees spread slowly westward to the edge of the Great Plains, where the lack of hollow trees for nesting stopped them. It was not until the 19th century that bees reached the Far West, carried there in the wagons of homesteaders.

Right about here I would like to put in a soapbox plug for snags - standing dead trees - that provide food, shelter and nesting sites for bees, screech owls, pileated woodpeckers and more. Please leave dead trees where they are as they are part of the big picture.

Honey was our earliest sweet, used universally until Alexander the Great, returning from an Asiatic exploration, brought with him the first sugar cane. Beeswax has been used traditionally for candles, and to this day is used by herbalists as a component of healing salves. Honey is a natural, unrefined food. It is unique in that it is the only unmanufactured sweet available in commercial quantities.

When most people think of plant pollination they think of the honeybee. Truth be known there are more than 3,500 species of wild bees that pollinate, though few of them produce honey. Some of our plants are self-pollinating, others are wind pollinated, but some 90 or more well known vegetables, fruits and legumes must have insect carried cross-pollination to assure not only a sufficient quantity of fruit or seed but also satisfactory quality.

Prior to the arrival of the honey bee, the native fruits and flowers of North America were obviously being successfully pollinated. One of the 3,500 wild bees that have come to national attention of late is the Orchard Mason Bee or Osmia lignaria.

The orchard mason bee is slightly smaller than a honey bee, shiny dark blue in color, and is a gentle beneficial insect that has potential as a pollinator of apples, cherries and other fruit trees. Studies by USDA/ARS researchers at Utah State University have established that the Orchard Mason bee is far more efficient as a pollinator of apples, pears, cherries and almonds than the honey bee.

Gregg Dickman, in his brochure, “Orchard Bees,” states that the Orchard Mason visits more blossoms each day than the honey bee, and pollinates a much higher percentage of those blooms visited. He states that the honey bee visits an average of 700 blooms daily. It pollinates only 30 of them, a mere five percent success rate. He further claims that Orchard Mason pollinates 1,600 flowers per day, a pollination success rate of 95 to 99 percent.

The Orchard Mason bee’s life history begins in the early spring, for that is when we first see them. The weather is warming; the fruit tree buds have swollen; the very first of the garden shrubs have just started to bloom. Somewhere, inside a cocoon, deep within a hole, the bees begin to stir.

They have spent the cold winter as fully formed adults, hibernating within the confines of a waterproof insulating cocoon. The female does not make her own hole, she uses existing holes in either wood or a man made beeblock for a nest. She chooses holes slightly larger than her body, usually 5/16 inches in diameter. When the female has provided a sufficient supply of food for the larva, she lays an egg and then seals the cell with a thin mud plug. When the temperature rises to 50 degrees Farenheit for a couple of days the following spring, the bees in the wooden nesting holes awaken. They begin to chew through the cocoon and make their way out through the mud wall and out into the world looking for food. One of the first blossoming plants they encounter is the Peiris japonica.

One clear limitation of the Orchard Mason is that it can only be used to pollinate early spring fruit crops. Unlike the honey bee, which operates all summer and into the fall, the Orchard Mason is dead by the first of June.

If you are so inclined, you can increase the population of Orchard Mason bees in your garden or orchard. Bee blocks are easy to make. All you need to do is drill 5/16 inch holes in a block of wood to create a nesting trap. Hang the trap under the eave of an outbuilding out of the sun and protected from the wind and at the end of spring, and by the first of June you will see the bee block filling up with mud.

Although the Mayans had stingerless honey bees in the skep, everyone has stingerless Mason bees in the orchard.

See you in the garden!

Kathleen Lamont is President of the Mountains Chapter of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association as well as a seasoned speaker on organic gardening practices. She can be reached at garden_girrl@yahoo.com

Resources

1. The Orchard Mason Bee by Brian L. Griffin from Back to Basics, 452-2866.
2. Orchard Mason Bee Blocks from Back to Basics, 452-2866.
3. Video: An Introduction to Beekeeping, A Step By-Step Guide with Ed Weiss, Beekeeper from Back to Basics, 452-2866.
4. Dadant & Sons Catalogue, 51 South 2nd, Hamilton, Illinois 62341, 800-637-7468, www.dadant.com
5. Canning & Preserving Without Sugar by Norma M. MacRae, R.D., Back to Basics, 452-2866
6. Old Favorite Honey Recipes, American Honey Institute and Iowa Honey Producers, Meyerbooks, Publisher, P.O. Box 427, Glenwood, IL 60425
7. Henderson County Beekeepers, NC Coop Extension Service, 828-697-4891

 

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