Blue Orchard Bee (Osmia lignaria)

April 5, 2024

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, Tinicum, Pennsylvania

This lil' fella is a mason bee. If you listen closely, you can hear it buzzing!

Happy Easter.

Now that spring has sprung, it was time to put my mason bee cocoons in the attic of their cozy home. Soon they'll hatch and begin pollinating fruit trees. Amazing little creatures!

today is a good day to bee

There's a Bee, likely a Mason Bee of some variety (Osmia ...) already working around my new insect houses... Too dismal for a good picture or ID really.

What a great idea!!

Omg 52 of our mason bees survived this year!!! 😍😍 I'm so pumped (in comparison, only 19 survived last year!)

I keep mason bees. Every day in the early spring, I go outside and watch them work. I sing to them as they store pollen from the apple trees and lay their eggs. I tell them how beautiful they are. Their children will know me next year.

Georgia Mason Bee (Osmia georgica)

June 24, 2023

Southeastern Pennsylvania

I knew that this was a new bee for me when I shot it, but it only just got IDed on iNaturalist, 7 1/2 months later. I used to research my own IDs, but I've gotten a bit lazy about that since I discovered iNat, and also I realized how often I used to be plain wrong.

Mason bee house of Portland

キバナコスモスにハキリバチの一種（6月18日）

The mason bee cocoons (above) are now in the attic of their nice new house (top photo). May they hatch, fly, pollinate my fruit trees and create a new generation of mason bees!

Another bamboo tube in my Insect Hotel is in use, likely by the same Mason Bee (Osmia spp.) as it chose the tube just above left of the first nest....

Caring for Nature with an Inkling Spirit

I never thought I would become an apiarist, but living in forests of America’s Pacific Northwest made this a logical stage in my growth as a naturalist. And I’m convinced that if he had known how simple it is to promote healthy bee populations, C.S. Lewis would have joined me in the hobby. After all, he delighted in their work ethic, describing the moment of their Narnian creation with the…

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