Cleaning Mason bees cocoons 2009

Getting rid of pollen mites is a good way help your Mason bee population grow. The cocoons in the picture are drying after being washed  and dipped in a mild beach solution. They will be kept in a secure container to protect them from mice.

Mason bee cocoons

 Candling the Mason bee cocoons shows which cocoons are not viable. Most of the cocoons in the batch above show a Mason bee inside in a fetal position. See other posts on Mason bees. http://blueberrytalk.wordpress.com/category/mason-bees/

Candling cocoons

Cleaning mason bee cocoons

Ayden (nine years old) has done a good job of cleaning the mason bee cocoons. The main thing is to get rid of all the pollen mites. We need to know how many cocoons we have but before counting we had everyone guess how many cocoons we had collected. All the guesses were too low but Tobia was closest with her guess of 600. The actual count was 770. We need to know the number of cocoons so we can put out the right number of nests next spring. Also we need to compare the number of cocoons with the results of pollination next summer. There are 1100 Bluecrop blueberry plants within 600 feet of the Mason bee nests and that is our target for improved pollination.

cleaned cocoons

how many cocoons?

It’s always hard to get good pollination with the Bluecrop variety. The result is a lot of small immature fruit as illustrated in the following picture.

poor pollination

 The video advertised in the following link gives complete details on cleaning cocoons:

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