Talk:Mason bee

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2021 and 25 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Katnewyen.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:41, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Vagabond95.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Mason bees in my garden

I recently discovered by accident that I have mason bees in my garden. I went to prune up my out of control grapes and needed to move a large black plastic pot full of dug fall bulbs.

When I picked it up, it began to hum with bees and one even stung me. I became quite alarmed because in the past I was allergic to bees and wondered why I didn't react, my hand swelled for only a day. I refused to kill them until I talked to my boss who raises honey bees. He came over and looked at them and knew exactly what they were: mason bees.

So here I am reading up on these harmless creatures who let me watch them work like the busy little bees that they are preparing for new life come next spring.

So, tell me if these working bees will make the move to the new block home that I plan on building for them and attaching to the fence over my compost bin where they currently reside?

I think I read in a book that there are some that make their tubes out of small stones and "mortar", which is where the name came from? Is this true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.62.120 (talk) 04:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Stinger information missing

The article does not say if the stinger of mason bees is barbed.

ICE77 (talk) 06:55, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

• it doesn't need to. Only the genus Apis has a barbed sting, out of over 20,000 known bees, and it says so on the article there. If we listed the fact that the stinger is NOT barbed in every WP article about a non-Apis bee, it would mean months of editing for little purpose. Dyanega (talk) 22:33, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Good to know you are a genius and you know everything. Next time I have a question I will ask you.

ICE77 (talk) 03:43, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

• It's not a matter of being a genius, it's a matter of knowing that if some occurrence is extremely rare, you only discuss it where it actually occurs (in this case, see [1]). I'm not saying this to be snarky, but to be sensible. For example, there are very few insects that are bioluminescent, most notably fireflies; there are millions of insects that are NOT bioluminescent, and it doesn't make sense to go to thousands of WP articles on other insects and add a statement that they are not bioluminescent. Dyanega (talk) 21:46, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I have made several revisions to the Mason bee page and found an appropriate place to insert a comment about its barbless stinger. Dyanega, while I sympathize with your concern about needless redundancy, this is something of a novice article, the vast majority of people do not know that only Apis (honey bees) have barbed stingers, and informing in this article does not commit you to revising every article.

GeeBee60 (talk) 15:48, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

GeeBee60, that's a good point. However, I don't see it as an instance of a "novice article" (not sure what you mean) but rather as an information that should be available to whoever reads this article and did not necessarily read about the genus Apis and, therefore, is unaware that Mason bees do not have a barbed stinger like honey bees.

ICE77 (talk) 05:09, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

"Novice" is not a Wikipedia term and all articles are available to all, but there are many novice mason bee keepers -- and that was the intent of the description. "Introductory" might be a better term. Your comment is about barbed stinger is confusing -- as both Dyanega and I have stated, mason bees do NOT have a barbed stinger; I've clarified my above comment and will double check the main entry. FYI, bees of the genus Apis are honey bees, Osmia and Chalicodoma are mason bees.

Evaluation for Writing for Biologists

Hello! I'm evaluating this article for a class so I welcome questions/comments on my critique.

The first thing I noticed is that the article is lacking a lot of sources. There is some good information present, but every factual statement needs to be sourced. If anyone has those sources it would be great if they could add them, I will try to find sources for the information as well. The citations present are factual rather than opinion pieces which is a good start, there just needs to be more citations. Some more recent sources would be a great addition as well, improving citations can only improve the article's credibility!

The article is very short, and I think it could benefit from having more subsections. I would suggest a section on specific morphology of the mason bees, describing what features define them and separate them from other bees. The end of the first section has a fantastic start to that, but it could be elaborated on. Pollen preferences and nesting behaviors would be good too, although I saw that nesting behavior is covered to some degree in the lifecycle section. This type of bee has an extremely diverse range of nesting behaviors and I think it would be important to cover that! I also noticed that there is a short mention of many species and where they are from, maybe there should be a section about what it is they need from their environments and why they live where they do.

The management section is a great start, but I think it could use more information and definitely more citations. For example, the final statement says "cited by different commercial growers" doesn't really give a legitimate factual citation. I know a fair amount of management information is spread by word of mouth, but there still needs to be a factual reference for the legitimacy of the article.

The photos used are fantastic, they're all high quality and it's a great idea to show natural and artificial nesting structures. Perhaps adding a picture that shows the physical features like the scopae would be helpful to add as well.

Again, please feel free to send questions and comments on this critique. I love these bees and I want to right by them with a high quality article! Vagabond95 (talk) 15:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Vagabond95

To Dig or Not to Dig

This article states that "Osmia females... They do not excavate their own nests." But the one about Osmia avosetta says "The female O. avosetta digs shallow tunnels in the ground." So shouldn't it be rephrased here to say that "They Most of them do not excavate their own nests" or "They With exception of O.avosetta, Osmia females do not excavate their own nests" or else? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.211.252.234 (talk) 15:47, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Description

A fuller description is needed, perhaps under a separate heading. The info about behavior is thorough, but basic information is lacking—how large are they? how much do they weigh? And I'm sure there's much more to be said. The pages on individual species provide nothing in this category either. KC 02:22, 27 April 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydstra (talk • contribs)