We have bees!

A couple of years ago we bought a wall mountable bee house from Aldi to see if we would get anything use it.  We almost forgot about it, it certainly wasn't used last year by bees but this year they have moved in.  Hurrah.  I've only recently bought my new camera and have not got used to it yet so I apologise for the poor quality and the lack of clarity but you can see them coming and going.

What we have are Mason Bees.  Industrious little no-sting solitary bees that are far more efficient at pollinating than the honey bee but they don't produce honey.  What they do is go collect pollen and they fill those little tubes, constantly returning to the same tube until they have filled a section of it with enough pollen and then they lay an egg and then seal it with dirt to create a cell and they do this until they have filled the entire tube.  Once they have filled one tube, they move onto another one and do this until they are finished laying eggs.

Update:  On 7th June, on BBC's Springwatch, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan done a feature on Mason Bees.  Its really interesting and shows how the bees create the cells and even shows the grubs that have hatched from the eggs.  The section runs from 15:20 to about 21:45 and includes information about the Great British Bee Count, which I took part in this year and found to be both informative and really enjoyable and thankfully I am not a "wafter" or "panicker", I am very calm around bees and so was able to participate easily.  I learned that there are far more different species of bees around my garden than I could ever have imagined.