Now that we have plants well established, we will add nesting boxes for bumble bees, orchard bees, and mason bees. NOT blocks of wood with holes drilled into them–these may look cute and easy, but they cannot be cleaned, which, as it turns out, is an important feature to consider if we are going to help our pollinators remain healthy.
Our bee mentor, Tom Sullivan of PollinatorsWelcome.com, has explained that we can help our bees survive better if we collect the cocoons at the beginning of winter and store them either in a refrigerator or in some other cold storage place for release in spring. Then clean out the nesting holes (tubes or hollow twigs or corrugated cardboard or stacking trays with routed channels)—scraping out debris and mites.
We found terrific stacking trays of nesting holes (for orchard bees and leaf cutter bees) at Crown Bees, http://www.crownbees.com
and
some cool Bombus boxes (with one glass side and a protective hinged lid) pictured at Hutchings Bee Service, https://sites.google.com/site/hutchingsbeeservice/