# Divert mason bees from nesting where they shouldn't?



## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

Giving them an alternative nest site should work. The mason bee, once it has a location will continue to fill each hole till she's done for the season. 

On a better note, there is a market for those bees! Sell them off but keep enough for yourself.


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## gezellig (Jun 11, 2014)

Are you certain this is mason bee behavior? Sounds more like mud dauber or dirt dauber to me.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

gezellig said:


> Are you certain this is mason bee behavior? Sounds more like mud dauber or dirt dauber to me.


Thank-you for that interesting trip into the world of the dauber wasps. After some research, I would have to say that they are not the culprits, though I do have an amazing variety of wasps here. (Until I started keeping bees and learning to closely observe them, I had thought that there were only a few varieties of wasps here. Last Summer though, I began observing wasps too, and was somewhat surprised that there were so many different ones.)

After visiting several different sites, it appears that the dauber wasps actually build their own tubes and provision them with spiders(!) to feed the young. I could stand to have fewer spiders here, especially the big black and yellow orb-weavers that will construct huge webs in front of my beehives if I don't keep the areas mowed down. Those buggers seem to be particularly fond of snacking on my bees...but I think that they are probably much too big for the wasps to handle.

I have observed mason bees here, and the examination of the nests (particularly those in the grooves of my frame components) leads me to believe that they are the guilty party. Originally, I had known nothing of the existence of these little creatures. One day I picked up my chainsaw to start cutting firewood and found various holes and ports full of the variety of clay that is natural to this area. I thought that I must have dropped it in some mud at some point, though I could not recall ever having done so. Then I started finding it in all sorts of other places, where I knew it hadn't been my fault. Then I was building frames one day and discovered what was going on. Pulling the components apart, I could see a cross-section of how the nest was constructed and provisioned. Having to scrape out all of the grooves in the components added a significant amount of time to my frame-building.


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