I bought a mason bee home, which no mason bee ever used. I bought bamboo so that I could grow canes to use in the mason bee home, instead of the cardboard tubes. The bamboo did not flourish here in the high desert. I think bamboo likes a little more humidity and rain.
So, I bought a mason bee home that came with bamboo cylinders. No mason bee used it.
My mason bee endeavors were just about over when I noticed that mason bees seemed to like my newly planted pot of strawberries, ordered as plants from Logee’s.
Every time I was outside on my deck there were bees flying around my pot of strawberry plants.
They weren’t as interested, by any means, in my pots of collards, my pot with its fig tree, or my pots of avocado trees.
The bees clearly weren’t interested in the strawberry plants, themselves, which for one thing had not even begun to flower.
What the bees seemed attracted to was the soil.
I remembered last year when I was digging around in my radish pot, that there were pupa things that looked a lot like bees. I reburied each one I found. I didn’t find all that many.
Sometimes there would be several bees all digging in different areas of the strawberry pot.
Sadly I never caught a picture of that.
It reminded me that my first attempt at growing strawberries had been using one of those plastic or vinyl grow bags supplied by some many growers with their strawberry bare-root plants.
The bare roots had been a bit slimy when they arrived and once planted, never grew. However, the bag attracted bees in rather large numbers.
As I watched the bees I would see them dig furiously then back into the “burrow”. I assumed they were laying their eggs.
I was pretty stoked that bees were going to be hatching from the bag, only I never saw a bee emerge. I began to fear that the plastic or vinyl or whatever it was gave off some kind of toxin when it got got, which it did in the New Mexico sunshine, for sure.
I waited a long time to throw the bag away, just in case there were some living bees in it. Once I’d thrown it away I never wanted another one.
So, this year when I found the strawberry plants at Logee’s I was delighted. I planted them in actual pots.
I can’t help but wonder if there’s something about strawberry plants that attracts bees.
Another thing that attracts bees is a source of drinking water. Bees having a drink ~ View pictures.