Cleaning cocoons – do or don’t

• Some on-line resources tell you to wash cocoons in water or clean them with sand. Crown Bees finds that a simple sorting with your hands to separate out the debris is adequate, and less messy!.  You could use a colander to sift out some of the debris.
• Having a few mites around your mound of cocoons is not damaging.  It’s the concentration of mites in the straw that prevents the mason bees from flying in spring.  In their normal day of pollen gathering, they’ll pick up pollen mites naturally.  It is part of nature at work!  If you have a heavy concentration of  pollen mites, Crown Bees, after detailed analysis, believes that mason bees with mites loaded on their backs may actually increase your mites in the yard, compounding the situation.
• If you found chalkbrood, we advise you to wash all cocoons as the chalkbrood spores may be on the walls of straws or cocoons.  AND open all of your nesting material.  This is a nasty spore that needs to be tackled before spring.

If you do want to wash cocoons:

• Mason Bee cocoons are fairly waterproof and can take quite a soaking.
  • Prepare one large bowl with about a gallon of cold water.  Add about a cup of 6% concentration bleach solution.  Prepare a second bowl of  cold water without bleach for rinsing.
  • Drop the cocoons into the bleach bowl and stir the cocoons around for around a minute or 3.  Using a strainer or sieve, move the soaked cocoons to the rinse water and stir them again for about a minute.
  • Finally, remove the cocoons from the rinse and place them on towels to dry.
  • It’s that easy… if you need to do it.
  • Before you place your cocoons in hibernation, ensure that the cocoons have dried adequately.  They should not be wet to the touch.
  • If you can, dry the cocoons outside where it’s cooler and not inside your house where some mason bees might think it’s spring due to the warmth!