Country Lore: Mason Bee ‘Boxes’ Kathy Fisher

Particularly useful in orchards, mason bees (also called blue orchard bees) can visit hundreds of flowers per day. They don’t make honey, but they collect pollen for nest holes where they lay eggs, and then plug the holes with mud. They look like small blue-black flies, and they rarely sting.

The bee larvae and cocoons spend the winter in the nesting holes, and then hatch in the spring about the same time as fruit trees blossom.