Everyone knows about honey bees and how they pollinate our flowers and gardens so the plants produce a bountiful harvest. They of course also give the extra gift of honey for themselves and us. Some people know about the honeybee mite that is decimating the population and killing millions of honey bees around the world.

But very few people know and understand how serious the problem really is and that our food supply is gravely threatened if pollination doesn't occur. It's simple, just like in our home garden, if the field doesn't get enough bees then fruit and vegetables don't grow.

What happens if food doesn't grow??

This is where the industrious Mason Bee steps in. The Mason bee is 75% more efficient than a honey bee and are great pollinators. The only draw back is that they do not produce honey. But they will pollinate and that will save our food supply.

The mason bee is easy to care for and you can easily create a habitat for them and help their population expand, while at the same time completely guarantee your garden gets fully pollinated. There are commercially made bee homes you can buy with disposable tubes to use in the holes. You can even buy the bees themselves (in cocoons) in the good quality nurseries.

You can start out with buying just a bee home and setting that out around mid to late February, and if you are lucky the bees that are already around looking for a nesting spot will find your home and begin using it without you doing anything. It's important to place the bee house in a sheltered location about 4' off the ground facing southeast where they can catch the morning sun. An added bonus would be if you can put it near a source of mud for the female to use in laying her eggs.

If you live in a wooded area or an area known to have woodpeckers in it, it's very important to protect your bees. Birds and woodpeckers love eating mason bees and the cocoons as well, they will peck them right out of the tubes like a little buffet.

Protecting them is easy to do, just go to your local hardware store and buy some wire netting or small holed chicken wire with openings about 1 cm square. Make a "bubble" of the wire around the bee home and secure it on all sides to the tree or wall that it's attached to. The bees will be completely unobstructed but the woodpeckers will have no access to the bees.

These female bees are very docile and gentle, they are very unlikely to sting. The males cannot sting at all and the females will only sting if they get trapped in your clothing or pressed in some way.

We must avoid killing honey bees and mason bees at all cost, our survival depends on it. Pesticides that are meant to kill harmful pests also kill the bees, so limit the use of household pesticides in your yard and garden.

It's best to plant a diverse garden with many different flowers to attract a healthy ecosystem of all types of creatures and insects. Then they usually are able to take care of themselves and the good bugs usually win. This is a great year to start mason bee keeping right in your own backyard.