There’s a small community of people who call themselves “bee ranchers,” and over two weekends in October, they gathered in Cutchogue to turn over their “children” — the mason bee cocoons they’d raised all summer in tiny phragmites tubes stacked in petite wooden houses in their backyards.
About 40 ranchers, four of whom traveled hours from New Jersey, took part in the “harvest parties,” helping these powerful native pollinators increase their numbers on the North Fork and gain a competitive edge against mites and other pests.
Laura Klahre, an organic berry farmer in Southold who sells her award-winning jam at Blossom Meadow Farm/Coffee Pot Cellars in Cutchogue, greeted them enthusiastically with hugs.
Outside on the shop’s porch, cardboard boxes were brought out, and each bee mom and dad began the messy process of removing cocoons from 6-inch-long phragmites tubes about the diameter of a pencil.
“Wow! This is textbook,” Klahre exclaimed as she pulled open one of the reeds that Virginia Cava of Southold had nurtured since April, revealing several light brown cocoons nestled beneath layers of mud deposited by their parents.
“These are chubby, perfect little babies, and there’s some poo in here because everybody poos, right?!” Klahre said.
A little TLC for the next generation
Physically removing the cocoons allows the ranchers to get rid of unwanted pests that have taken up residence in the bee cottages. Among them is the Houdini fly, a kleptoparasite —aka a sticky maggot — which don’t attack mason bees directly but instead feed on the pollen and nectar stored in the tubes for the young bees, starving the larvae.
The next step was emptying the cocoons into a cardboard box. Then the human caretakers stirred them in a bucket of diluted bleach and water, giving them a bath to kill pollen mites. That was followed by a freshwater rinse and time to dry in the open air.
Klahre said the process improves the bees’ health, making them more active and prolific when they emerge from their cocoons the following spring.
“It’s super fun, and masons are native to the North Fork,” said Cava, who has been an adoptive bee parent for five years. “They pollinate our native plants, so they’re made for each other.”
She started this spring with 62 cocoons — 37 males and 25 females — and ended up with 110.
“You did well,” an ecstatic Klahre told her, adding that producing viable cocoons comes down to genetics, biology and nature.
Inside the store, two baking sheets on the counter became the sorting and grading station. With Klahre’s guidance, Cava sifted through her pile, separating males, females and rejects.
Klahre counted the cocoons she would overwinter and paid Cava 40 cents apiece, for a total of $44 — much like a buyback program.
Sweet dreams in a crisper drawer
A refrigerator would be the next home for the pinky-nail-sized, would-be bees.
Klahre began this scientific overwintering process in her own refrigerator’s crisper drawer because, without refrigeration, “otherwise they think it’s spring.”
That arrangement lasted until her husband declared, “You have to get your own fridge.”
She did, developing a successful method for keeping the cocoons dormant through the winter. A wet felt pad goes at the bottom of a bowl, topped by a cozy, dry pad for the cocoons to rest on. A cover comes off once a month so Klahre can check on her sleeping charges, which are kept at 4 degrees Celsius.
“That puts them into a nice deep sleep,” she said.
The secret lives of mason bees
Klahre, who has studied and raised the black-and-purplish mason bees at home for 14 years, says research shows that keeping the phragmites tubes about a half-foot long produces the best male-to-female ratio.
“Females will only lay if the tubes are really short and small in diameter,” she said.
Klahre describes herself as “the only producer of high-quality mason bees in the Northeast.” mason bees pollinate crops as far south as Georgia, and some of her bee ranchers travel all the way from Boston to pick up their bees.
Local phragmites won’t do, according to Klahre, because the reeds are too large. Instead, she orders them in bulk from the West Coast.
“Bees want to right-size their home,” she explained.
Every spring, each bee rancher receives what’s called a deployment box — a palm-sized cardboard container holding the season’s cocoons, from which the emerging bees will chew their way out of their natural shells.
According to Klahre, the process produces a series of popping sounds from inside the box, “just like Rice Krispies in a bowl of milk!”
Once the bee houses are installed in their backyards, the bees claim individual reeds and do a little housekeeping, leaving behind saliva that helps them recognize their own scent. Klahre says the bees can even detect the scent of their ancestors in tubes occupied the previous year.
The males emerge first in early spring and, according to Klahre, can smell the females through their cocoons. Mating begins a few weeks later.
“With climate change, they are emerging earlier in the spring,” she added.
During their active season in spring and early summer, mason bees buzz around their foster parents’ yards, pollinating fruits and vegetables and significantly increasing yields, according to the ranchers.
Fostering the bees gives them a place to live, with plenty of food nearby for their offspring. Klahre said they don’t have to travel far because everything they need is available in their temporary parents’ backyards.
The bee cottages are painted blue because, according to Klahre, “masons see blue really well.” Chicken wire covers the entrances, protecting the bees from predators such as squirrels, birds and raccoons.
Proud parents, happy bees
Next, it was time for five-year bee foster parent Janet Solely of Oakdale to present her bees.
Gingerly cracking open the tip of a tube with her fingertips, then slowly splitting the reed to reveal the cocoons inside, Solely was rewarded for her careful technique with smiles and cheers.
“Janet, your backyard landscape must be yummy and nutritious because you have big, chunky cocoons!” Klahre exclaimed.
Solely said her two varieties of cherry trees and a native beach plum provided food for the mason bees, which in turn helped produce an abundant fruit harvest this summer.
“I went to a lecture Laura was giving about bees, and I’m so interested in how they’re such effective pollinators,” Solely said. “It blew my mind learning about the masons, and I thought, I’ll try it!”
Tiki of Rocky Point, who prefers to go by her first name only, finds raising the bees both adorable and intriguing.
“It’s also weirdly fun trying to outsmart the other creatures who try to get into the cocoons, like raccoons,” she said. “I’m challenged by how I can do it better. It’s a way to interact with nature in a healthy and sustainable way.”
