🐝 2020 Mason & Leafcutter Bee Rental Program! 🌼
We hope you’re faring well this winter! The recent weather has definitely gotten us thinking about warmer days, and we were wondering…

- Pollination! These bees will increase your yields for plants and trees that flower from March – August. Honeybees don’t event start until mid-June most years.
- Education. Raising your own bees gives you a chance to experience the miracle of these sweet, gentle bees up-close and personal.
- Supporting our native bee populations. These bees you host on your property will lay eggs in the nesting boxes you provide, but some of them will also lay eggs out in nature.
- They don’t sting and don’t require much care. That’s right! They are very docile, and they don’t have a single queen to protect like a honey bee. You can stand right in front of their bee house and not worry about you or your family being stung.
- We will pick up and install the mason bee boxes for you in March, hanging them somewhere in a sunny spot. These friendly bees only travel about 300’ from their home.
- If your property does not have a good mud hole for them, we will create one for you (most properties already have something suitable).
- In June we will pick up the bees and return them to Rent Mason Bees, who clean and store the houses in the off season so they’re ready for the next year.
- We will do the same for the Leafcutter Bees, as their flying season is right after (and they’re also adorable, gentle bees).

Why do the houses have to be returned?
The bees need to be protected from the parasitic mono wasp, mites, bacteria and fungus. In the wild, bees do not reuse the same nesting site year-after-year. If you want to keep bees year-round you can, but Rent Mason Bees does it for us to make it more economical and increase the likelihood of the bees surviving and multiplying.

If you have old mason bee nesting boxes in your yard you should remove them and dispose of them – they are a source of disease, fungus and mites that harms mason bees and will probably just be ignored by wild bees as a good nesting place.

Cost for HGO to install and remove Mason Bee boxes
We are offering Mason Bee service for $100 ($50 for the kit/bees, $50 for labor). If you’ve been a Mason Beekeeper with us in the past, you get $5 off! Leafcutter Bee rental and service is $50.
We need to order the bees the first week of March, so email us at hello@hg-organics.com soon to let us know if you want to sign up! We’re so excited to be offering this service, and hope you’ll consider trying your own hobby bee-hosting!
Thank you so much,
Homegrown Organics & Rent Mason Bees

