On Sat, Nov 15, 2025, we were honoured to have teacher, Amanda Stevenson, share her knowledge about how to care for mason bees. This was part of our Leaves & Bees Workshop.
Following, an autumn walk, we returned to the Kinross Creek common room, to learn about mason bees.
Amanda showed us how to:
- Open the mason bee hotel and remove the trays
- Scrape the trays to remove the cocoons
- Rince the cocoons in a bowl of water
- Brush off the cocoons with a toothbrush
- Disenfect the cocoons with a solution of water and 1 cap of bleach
- Dry the cocoons on a towel, by gently rolling the cocoons with your finger
- Shine a light through the cocoons to see if they are viable
- Store the cocoons in a small cooler in the fridge over winter
- In the Spring bring the cocoons back outside and the bees will break out and pollinate the flowers!
It was our first year with our mason bee hotel (donated by the Environmental Youth Alliance) and we were happy to see that it was such a success. In Spring 2025, we started with 20 cocoons and by fall 2025 we had 31 new cocoons! We also did not see any evidence of houdoni flies (which prey on mason bees). Yay!
We look forward to seeing our mason bees thrive in the local trail!
Thank you to our participants for attending: Catherine, Connie G, Connie H, Ellie, Genevieve, Grace, Robin, Stevan, and Sung.