As you may have gleaned, things have been rather busy recently chez Duver Diary and it was mid November before I suddenly realised I hadn’t returned my Mason Bee tubes. Thankfully it’s been mild here so I thought it was still worth doing.
I pulled out all the tubes and, as instructed, where no ‘cap’ was visible I held them up to the light to see if the tube was blocked (because apparently tubes can be occupied even if not capped) and sure enough there were a number which were blocked.
Happily, whereas in my last post in September I thought I had seven capped and therefore occupied tubes, when I actually investigated them all, there were fourteen!
As explained last time, some of the tubes appear to have been capped by leaves not mud – see below – and these are occupied by leaf cutter bee coccoons. Mason Bees UK don’t want these returned, so I’m following their instructions to look after these at home.
I’ve now sent all the mud capped tubes off in a Jiffy bag and am looking forward to receiving another set of Red Mason Bee cocoons in the spring.
With thanks to Mason Bees UK for making it all so easy.