As I have been building homes I sand down the rough edges and remove the wood burrs that the router leaves behind.
I wonder if the bees prefer me leaving some of this wood material behind to help build their homes with.. or if it gets in their way and is just an annoyance to them. Above you can see what my bee boards look like before I remove the burrs.
I use a folded up piece of sandpaper and work it down the channels to clear out any wood debris. But I wonder if the bees would rather me leave this stuff behind. I have seen a mason bee collecting wood material so it is possible.
Though I worry if I leave too much debris behind the boards will not stack tight and make it easier for predators and parasites to move into the bee homes.
When the channels are sanded there is still little bits of saw dust and stuff I missed. So they indeed have materials to work with regardless of how well I clean up these new boards.
Removing these burrs make the boards sit flush and in the past it's worked well. But maybe the bees have to travel further to find nest building material if I do not leave much behind.
Well I will test this idea next year. I cleaned most of the boards but left a few dozen uncleaned. We shall see if the bees go for one or the other. It's been alot of work cleaning all of these but once it's done it's all done. Until next year when there is mud and larva poop and pollen to clean out.
I think I am all done building bee boards for the moment. Next is to see if the bees like them again next year. And maybe I will have a few extras to put in other locations to help the local solitary bee population.
If all of these boards get filled up that would give me thousands of bees. We shall see if we have any vacancy left.
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STOPWow, this is fascinating. You've made so many boards for the bees! I know it was a long time ago, but how did it go? What were the results?