News — Bee House

The solitary bee industry is taking off, which attracts companies with the sole purpose of making money. We helped start the industry back in 2008 and see both good and bad practices abound! Your success is honestly important to us, and we want to give you the tools to make informed decisions. A growing industry, while popular, can often breed problems. Perhaps the biggest problem facing the solitary bee industry is the boom of uninformed people/companies selling bees and products. Did you know that certain bee rearing practices or a poorly designed bee house can wind up doing more harm...

First and foremost, a THANK YOU to all of our Bee Farmers and Bee Buy Back Participants this season!  You can take pride knowing that your region-specific mason bee cocoons will go to next season's bee raisers and help increase pollination and food production across the country! We also wanted to take this opportunity to alert you to a few emerging issues that we noticed during this harvesting season and give you a few tips to reduce the incidences of bee loss next year. What we want to see! A healthy mason bee cocoon (below) will appear dark grey or brown, ovular...

Each month our Bee Informed Blog highlights current news, science, and research related to solitary bee conservation, food insecurity, and sustainability. 1. Helping trees survive the drought Trees, both urban and rural, especially our native trees, provide habitats for birds, insects, and other animals. Trees provide food and nesting sites for many of our native bees, the shade that can reduce our energy use during extreme heat and help clean the air of pollutants. And as droughts become more intense and frequent, the trees are hurting.Learn what you can do to help our trees (and bees) in times of drought in this article published...

The continuous blooming of native plants to provide pollen and nectar - check! Mud-rich clay source and deciduous leaves nearby for building nests - check! Bee-safe nesting materials - check! Bee hotel installed - check! If you build it, they will come, right? Well, not necessarily. "Why aren't my bees nesting?" is one of the most common questions we receive from our bee raisers. We understand how frustrating it can be to take the time to create safe nesting habitats for solitary bees only to have them struggle to reproduce or to fly off in search of more desirable nesting...