This is a commercial site, but they do a lot of education work and have lots of good info on their site: http://crownbees.com/learn-mason-bees http://crownbees

This is a commercial site, but they do a lot of education work and have lots of good info on their site: http://crownbees.com/learn-mason-bees http://crownbees.com/learn-mason-bees I bought two starter tubes of blue orchard mason bees four years ago. Last year, I collected 100 filled tubes (natural reeds) of bees. Crown Bees recommends not using holes drilled in lumber because they're not very reusable and can spread disease (can't be cleaned). The bees seem to like natural reeds the best. I store my bees in their tubes in the fridge in a humidified box during the winter months, and harvest the tubes in April. I split open the tubes and collect and inspect the cocoons. Each tube can have 8-10 cocoons, although some fail completely. The population can grow very quickly when you care for them this way.