Mason Bees: the ultimate garden guest

Last year, my garden's performance was disappointing. Factors like the extremely hot Kansas City summer and numerous spring storms contributed to this. Some vegetables just weren't thriving, and I kept questioning the cause. Then, one day, I noticed a bee on my green beans and realized I hadn't seen bees all summer. Suddenly, they appeared, and my green beans thrived. I always plant plenty of flowers, such as marigolds, zinnias, and cosmos, to attract bees to my garden. So where were the bees?

Bees are declining so it makes sense that my inner city garden was being affected. We also have neighbors that use the mosquito services where they spray harsh chemicals to have a mosquito free summer. But what most do not realize is that these spraying services also affect other insects like the bees!

This summer I am going to try sometuing I have never done before...Mason Bees!!

What are Mason bees?

Mason bees are small, gentle powerhouses that can transform a garden’s health and harvest with almost no maintenance.

Unlike honeybees, mason bees are solitary—each female is her own queen, nesting in hollow stems, tubes, or small bee houses rather than hives. Their name comes from the way they “mortar” their nests with mud, building neat chambers where they tuck an egg and a pollen loaf for each future bee.

One of the best things about mason bees is their pollination power: a single mason bee can pollinate as many flowers as roughly one hundred honeybees because they carry loose pollen all over their fuzzy bodies. That messy style means a very high percentage of the flowers they visit actually set fruit, which is a huge boost for apples, cherries, berries, and other early crops.

They’re also early risers, flying on cool, damp spring days when honeybees stay home, so they catch those first blossoms that might otherwise go under‑pollinated. For home gardeners, that often shows up as fuller fruit clusters, better berry yields, and more productive early-blooming ornamentals.

Despite their productivity, mason bees are extremely gentle. Males can’t sting at all, and females rarely sting because they don’t have a hive or honey to defend. That makes them ideal for family gardens, schoolyards, and small urban spaces where you want pollinators buzzing close by without worrying about aggressive behavior.

Inviting mason bees in is more like putting up birdhouses than becoming a beekeeper: you offer nesting tubes, a bit of damp mud, plenty of flowers, and a pesticide‑free yard, then let them do their work. With a simple bee house and a little yearly maintenance, you can support thriving mason bee populations and enjoy the payoff in blossoms and baskets of fruit year after year.

This is the bee house I am going to use. I will do a follow up post when it is time to place the cocoons out in a few weeks.