Shopsmith Forums

Spring, just never enough time to get everything done that you want to.

In my archive I spotted a project that has sat way to long undone. It is a box for Mason Bee's. You can look them up but very quickly they are very early bee's which pollinate early flowers/fruit trees/etc. They are a safe bee in that you would have to grab one and start crushing it to have it sting.... They don't pay you much mind and just go about their work. Unlike other bees they do not make a nest or hive but rather look for 5/16" holes to call home.

There are a lot of ways to make places for them and if you do a search online you will find hundreds of projects like the one I'm doing. This is my first attempt at this so who knows how this will end up.

To start with you need a 5/16" drill bit. Some people go bigger and some smaller but I went along with the 5/16" crowd. I wanted to use a spade bit and my larger set has one that size. (Some day I need to make a storage system for those bits).

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The spade bits are also a bit longer, note the twist drill to the left. That sound like a good thing for this project.

For the hole locations I came up with the idea of drilling one set then flipping the workpiece and doing a second set. More guess work here, it sounded good so I went with it. I used a center finder to set the height of the main table, in horizontal mode.

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The wood was some left over 2" x 6" pieces. I cut them about 5" long so I could get three of them out of the piece of wood. I did one additional cut on each piece, taking about a 1/2" off in the direction of the grain. This will be reattached when the project is finished. The reasoning is that I can drill through holes by coming from each side rather then just deep holes. I don't think the bees will be to upset, they will pretty much be left in the dark.

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You didn't under stand that last bit just wait it will be cleared up quite soon.

More coming

Ed

At this point I added and indexed a sacrificial board to my fence. Made sure the depth stop was set so the bit would not drill the fence but still make a hole in the wood.

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Next I glued a 5/16" dowel in the hole. I put some tape down just in case, no need for any glue clean up.....

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After the glue had a while to dry I use a saw to cut off all but about a 1/4" of the dowel.

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The sacrificial fence is then rotated out of the way so the first batch of holes can be made. More on that coming up.

Ed

With the dowel pin out of the way it is time to set up do the drilling. Remember to do a depth stop setting that allows the bit to go more then half way through.

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Begin by drill the one set of holes then flipping the workpiece and doing the second set. Since I have 3 sets to do I did them all at the same time.

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At this point the sacrificial is positioned so the dowel is located on the center line of the drill bit. The drilled holes are now facing the fence and the dowel goes the hole there by indexing the location of the hole from the back side. This second pass makes the holes through holes. Here is a creative way to show that.

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You want access to through holes for clean outs, a dowel will rod out the non-hatched from the year before and other unwanted junk so they can be used the next year.

Just a some bit more coming.

Ed

This was my first test of procedure and method. These can be used but I wasn't all that happy with how the end holes. I can see small cracks in the end grain so I think the 1/2" space needs to be more like 1". I'm not all that trilled with the hole patter either. Time to play with sketchup and see what i can come up with.

So what is left to do with this batch is to reattach the backs and stack them together and see how the Mason bees like them. I did have on come visit me while I was working on the project...... A good sigh?

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If this project interested you let me know. I have more experimenting to do, posting it here is optional if you know what I mean.

Ed

I'd be surprised if you received any complaints about the cracks.

I'm curious to know more about your plans -- do you intend to make a condo-style arrangement, or lay it out like a suburban neighborhood? And where will you locate them (or is the last photo the final destination -- in which case, I'm curious how you would handle the air traffic when you visit the shop)?

I'll bee sure to spread the word down here about the new housing up there in Chill-a-noise.

Neat project! I'm afraid I'd only attract mud daubers around my place here in NC. I found one had made nests in the holes on one of my SS miter gauges right under my nose a couple weeks ago. *sigh*

I think I will build several and suggest neighbors use them. I have a Word Document that I downloaded on the value of these bees and how to care for them (do this and don't do that) if anyone wants it. I could also post it here if reqeusted. Bee pollination has become an increasing problem in the past few years (Bush's fault) so we need to do something about it.

I took the afternoon to come up with a totally new design that makes it seem more like a woodworker is making these. I wasn't able to finish it but it is very close to assembly time. Should have pictures tomorrow.

Ed

reible wrote:I took the afternoon to come up with a totally new design that makes it seem more like a woodworker is making these. I wasn't able to finish it but it is very close to assembly time. Should have pictures tomorrow.

Ed

If you are reconsidering your design check out the tray style mason bee house (start with the lowest blog entry and work your way up).

This is a photo from that blog site



and a closeup

rpd wrote:If you are reconsidering your design check out the tray style mason bee house (start with the lowest blog entry and work your way up).

This is a photo from that blog site



and a closeup

I did see that in my research, an interesting idea to be sure. I did however take a different approach. Who knows I might try one of these another year if I keep up with the effort.

Thanks,

Ed