Article from March 11, Surrey "Now Newspaper" article titled "Are we hurting our buzzing buddies again?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This from 2013. There is a large group of commercial growers who are shipping cocoons around with little knowledge on the subject and researchers are alarmed at the results: "Little research has actually shown exactly why or how it can harm organisms or whole populations. Some folks up here will be taking legal action on state, if not federal level, within the next few years. There is growing momentum." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, I feel that this subject is important enough to warrant its own separate page. It might sound like a rant but I'm wanting people to think about it.
Just put up condos and see what you get. I get asked an awful lot by folks of where they can get bee cocoons, or do I sell them etc.?
First, I wouldn't sell cocoons. I'm not in the "cattle" shipping business, but I'll give you some to get started, IF you feel you absolutely require them. If you're a commercial operator and have acreage to have a crack at utilising orchard mason bees to do your pollinating instead of honey bees, fine, I would agree to start with a whack of cocoons to really make things count. If you're a gardener and want to have a condo or three set up in your yard, I would first try to find out what kind of habitat you have in your vicinity and try and convince you to just start with empty condos put up in the best suitable place, and see what comes around. Most likely, you'll find them coming to your condo if the conditions are right. After that, the best location in your yard that produced bees, is probably where you want to concentrate your efforts of putting up more condos. Besides, just because you put cocoons out, doesn't mean the emerging bees have to stick around.
In conclusion: Save your $$, put up a condo in the right place, they'll come.
 The annual ritual of extracting cocoons from your condos and getting things ready for next Spring. Here's my daughter, when she was a little kid, and my dad doing the honours in the backyard on a nice Fall day. Don't do this inside, especially if it's later say, December or January. The bees will probably emerge within minutes thinking it's Spring and time to "wake up".
Selling Bee Cocoons and Shipping Around??
People, haven't we learned enough already? Look at what's happened to other things we've "managed" in nature/agriculture, and what problems we're dealing with now. How could anyone, who is fully knowledgable about these bees (as well as any other invertebrate for that matter), honestly recommend shipping bee cocoons all over the continent? Just go on the internet and put in something like this, "Where to buy mason bee cocoons", and see the plethora of sites that have cocoons available to sell. You can even get them in price-conversions for shipping across the border with no feature built in to their system, educating you about maybe a) not having to buy them anyways; or b) geographically maybe this species or subspecies isn't found in your location!
So, if you care to hear my opinion, don't be shipping bees all over the place, especially when you think about different climatic zones, the associated parasitoids and parasites that are different species or in different amounts of prevelance depending on where you are. Who knows where this could lead us (again). Ever heard of colony collapse disorder? How about noxious weeds, zebra mussels, norwegian rats, etc., etc.
Okay, so maybe our sweet little bees are so cool, that we feel the urge to share. Fine, just stick with your very near vicinity or check with an expert to find out what they think. And by expert, why not talk to someone who is actively doing research in this area as a scientist. There's an awful lot of hobbyist (entrepreneurs) out there that aren't entomologists. I'd be contacting someone at University of Guelph (Canada), or how about USDA (United States Dept. of Agriculture) like the bee research lab say, in Utah? I can't name them as I haven't got permission to post here. I also know that they're too busy doing research all over the place and basically haven't got a lot of time to assist the general public, especially about a species of bee that has been well studied already. This is what I found when I was doing my undergrad at university anyways. I'll work on posting geographical distributions of several species of bees when I can come up with them. I've collected bees from Yukon to Saskatchewan in all my years as a field entomologist, and even I don't know exactly where all of them have their limits, but I have a pretty good idea. There's also climate change that changes the climatic zone tolerances for several species which has their geographic borders in flux. And that's just Western Canada, so I don't know about other areas. But I do know that I wouldn't be shipping my stuff off willy nilly.
In conclusion: Don't ship bees (cocoons) around outside of the area you are sure the same subspecies or species is found. Check with true experts about this if you aren't sure. Gord Hutchings odonatas@uvic.ca |