These black bees use mud and other masonry materials to build their nests and lay their eggs in cavities trees, hollow plant stems, worm holes, etc. We use natural grass reeds we collect and cut for our bees to nest in. These bees love these reeds to nest in and usually prefer to use these over other nesting materials. Mason bees are spring, early summer bees and can pollinate during cool weather for early blooming spring trees, berry bushes, and flower gardens. They're also called orchard bees because they are excellent pollinators of fruit and nut tree orchards.
We are gardeners that enjoy nature and preserving our native species of bees. We have had great success with all of our mason bees and built up our supply. Now we sell some of our extra mason bees to people interested in raising mason bees. We raise our bees in gardens with a variety of different flowers, wild flowers, berry plants, flowering bushes and fruit trees in Utah. We harvest the cocoons in the fall of each year. We then store them in a refrigerated environment until bees are ready to be released when the outside temperature is correct and enough pollen sources are around for the bees.