IAN MCCLUSKEY: Every spring, when the first flowers bloom,
you can find Ron Spendal
at the Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve in Hillsboro.
He comes every day, at the same time every day,
for 100 days in a row.
Ron is a beekeeper, of sorts.
And he's here to check his mason bee boxes.
The connection that I feel with mason bees
is basically because they are very docile
and they're very, very manageable.
Mason bees are one of Oregon's native bee species.
Because they are a metallic blue-green,
they're often mistaken for flies.
They're also called blue orchard bees for their color
and because they're really good at pollinating fruit trees.
Get this -- if you had an acre of apple trees,
it would take anywhere from 30- to 40,000 honeybees
to pollinate.
But it only takes about 250 mason bees.
See the mason bees?
So they've become popular with orchard growers
as well as backyard gardeners.
Ron started like most folks.
He attended a lecture on mason bees and learned the basics.
But he had more questions.
Because I haven't been "formally educated" as an entomologist,
I would be called a citizen scientist.
One of the benefits of being a citizen scientist
is you can basically make the most of your curiosity.
Most folks who discover mason bees
will put up a nesting box in their backyard.
But Ron didn't just stop at one.
Well, I have 35 nesting stations
and a total of about 500 nesting trays
out across the county.
Mason bees, like other native bee species,
usually live in holes and cavities.
When folks want to raise mason bees,
paper tubes are often used for the nesting tunnels.
But the problem with the paper tubes
is that Ron couldn't look inside them
to see what the bees did.
[ saw whirring ]
So Ron turned to his woodworking skills.
I have probably made, oh, close to 700 or so nesting trays.
One of the things that Ron was curious about
was just how big a tunnel should he make?
This set has nesting channels that are variable sizes.
So we've done this experiment, and about 91% of the time,
they will next predominantly in the 5/16".
Ron also wanted to learn more
about the life cycle of mason bees,
like how long it takes for them to emerge
from their cocoons in the spring.
In nature, this happens deep inside the tunnels.
But we set up our cameras with Ron to find out.
It's early spring, and the days are starting to warm.
The bees are about to chew through their cocoons.
When the temperature starts to rise,
that means its metabolic rate rises.
It's been living off of its body fat.
And if it's basically exhausted its body fat,
it's starving to death.
So it needs to get out of the cocoon to get some nourishment.
The bee inside the cocoon can take anywhere from
probably 15 minutes up to a couple of hours
to chew the hole big enough for it to exit.
IAN MCCLUSKEY: Oh! There he goes!
There he goes!
Oh, my god! There he is.
There's his wings.
RON: The whole time he was an adult in the cocoon
he was pretty cramped in, so once he gets out,
he's able to stretch everything out.
Once he gets flight-ready and flies off,
he'll drink nectar, and then basically just patrol around
trying to find a female.
They quickly mate with the females and then die.
Then the pregnant females have the hard work to do.
Every day, they collect pollen and nectar from flowers.
In each foraging trip,
she probably visits around 75 flowers.
So this little pollen pile, about the size of a pea,
represents 1,875, roughly, flower visits.
So that's why the mason bees are such great pollinators.
And then she'll lay one egg on it,
which looks like a small rice pellet.
Then they seal up a mud wall.
This is why they're called mason bees.
She'll gather pollen every day, lay an egg, and build a wall,
day after day, for about 30 days.
She lays female eggs to the back of the tunnel
and males in the front, and then she dies.
[ buzzing ]
Honeybees are famous for forming hives
and collectively working together.
Mason bees work individually.
They are known as solitary bees.
But they can live right next door to each other.
Ron calls them gregarious.
Like the bees he tends, Ron works alone.
But he's also gregarious too.
He loves it when visitors stop to ask him questions.
When they first come out of their cocoons,
the females will fly around in front of the nesting station
and they'll memorize landmarks.
They nested in every one of the drain holes
in the aluminum window sills.
So they will nest wherever they can get to.
[ kids chattering and yelling ]
At nearby Lincoln Street Elementary,
he set up a nesting box in the school garden
and shares his passion for mason bees
with second-graders.
- Oh, the bee! A bee!
RON: He's been in that cocoon for 10 months,
so he's kind of trying to figure out what's outside here.
Hey, remember what we talked about with the mason bees
and how the males don't sting?
Okay, see, there's a bee on my thumb.
[ kids exclaiming ]
If Ron had his way, more and more folks
would raise mason bees in their backyard.
I think anybody that can raise mason bees
should raise mason bees.
And the fact that it has a 300-foot foraging range
means that if you do raise mason bees in your backyard,
you're probably going to improve the pollination
that's occurring in your yard
and in your surrounding neighbors' yards.
Ron's research is helping us better understand
these little native bees.
But it's slow and methodical,
so Ron continues his solitary work.
And, like the mason bees, he'll return every spring.
Another day of data, yep.