The ideal time for replacement is outside of the mason bee flight season, i.e., between September and January. Try to avoid replacing tubes between February and August.

Checking and Removing Old Tubes

Begin by placing your BeeHome on a smooth surface with the tube side facing up. Remove the old tubes from the BeeHome. Pliers can be helpful here. As each tube is removed, the contents of the box should loosen slightly. Before replacing older, empty tubes, inspect them carefully to ensure no wild bees are still nesting inside. It is best to use a flashlight to illuminate the interior. If you see a nesting plug at the back of a tube, it might be an old nest. Check if you can see an exit hole in the nesting plug. If this is the case, the tube can be removed. If you are unsure whether there are still bees in a tube, leave it outdoors in a sheltered spot and do not discard it.

Tip: Mark the tubes for better overview

You can mark freshly sealed tubes with a colored pen each year, for example, with a green dot on the nesting plug for tubes sealed that year. It is best to use a soft brush for marking the nesting plug. This marking will then give you an overview in the following year of whether there is still activity in the nesting tubes or whether it is time for a replacement. If your marking is still visible in spring and in the spring of the following year, it is likely that there are indeed no more insects inside. Some wild bee species skip a season and only emerge every two years (prolonged diapause). So, if you want to be absolutely sure that there is no more activity in the nest, you should wait two years and then replace the tube.

Inserting the new tubes

Then insert the new tubes. Each tube has a node, called internode, which acts as a natural partition in the channels. When inserting, make sure that this node is aligned with the back of the BeeHome, leaving enough space at the front for nesting. As a natural product, the tube may be interrupted. Sometimes, small white membranes are also found in the tubes; these do not bother the bees and are simply transported out.

Make sure the box is packed tightly again so that nothing can shift or fall out. You can use a rubber or leather mallet to tap the last tubes into the inner box. Depending on the diameter, it may be that not all 100 tubes fit into the inner box.

The right preparation for a safe nesting site

Wild bees prefer smooth nesting entrances where they can crawl in and out without risk of injury. They will ignore splintered and fibrous tubes. For this reason, all our reed tubes for the BeeHomes are carefully sanded. Since the replacement tubes from us are not yet sanded, it is important that you finally remove any wood splinters. This ensures that the tubes are smooth and the bees cannot injure their wings when flying in and out. You can brush the tubes with a stiff brush (e.g., a standard shoe brush) or sand them with sandpaper (grit 80-150).

With these simple steps, you can ensure that your BeeHome remains a safe and comfortable home for wild bees in the coming years. By replacing the tubes and thoroughly sanding them, you ensure that the bees feel comfortable. This way, you make a valuable contribution to the protection of wild bees and support biodiversity right in your own home.