Introducing our Solitary Bee Starter Kits - everything you need to provide a home for native solitary bees in your garden, allotment or green space - except the bees and flowers! 
 
Each Starter Kit comes with a MasonBees Nesting Tube holder of your choice plus 30 Nesting Tubes and 10 Tube Refills, giving your local bees more than enough nesting material for your first season together in their new home - over 6.5m of available cavity space!
 
Caring for our native bees has never been more important and providing a nesting site is a first step towards improving things for our pollinating pals. But it's just the first step. 
 
Overwintering solitary bees in a pest-free environment and providing a fresh nesting site the following spring are vital for a population to flourish, year on year.
 
Developed since 2011, MasonBees Nesting Tubes are the best man-made nesting material you can provide for visiting solitary bees. Made from strong and resilient spiral cardboard, the outer layer is designed to be re-usable, while the inner layer can be easily removed and replaced.
 
In addition to ensuring nesting sites are clean each Spring, using MasonBees Nesting Tubes allows for the opportunity each year to disrupt parasite cycles and remove flies, wasps and mites which may have also infiltrated solitary bee nests.
 
Most 'bee hotel' products available do not allow for easy cleaning of nesting cavities or the removal of the parasites and predators which also occupy the nests each year. This step is often overlooked, but it is so incredibly important - you can imagine that a dirty, parasite-infested hotel is not a safe place for bees to raise their young.
 
Opening occupied inner tubes couldn't be easier. The layers begin to unravel when soaked in water* for 20-30 minutes, allowing any Red Mason bee cocoons inside to float to the surface, unharmed, while parasites float to the bottom! Water-soaking isn't necessary, either - tubes occupied with water-sensitive species can easily be opened by hand.
 
When dry, cocoons extracted from nesting tubes should be stored in the dark, in a breathable container, in an unheated garage or shed over the Winter months, before being released back into the wild in Spring.