My hubby blamed the lack of bees for not getting fruit on our trees; All of us had forty fruit trees, and it was the second consecutive year the people I was with and I hadn’t had USble fruit on our trees, then my hubby kept saying he was going to get the bees into our orchard, but he hadn’t done it; I was going through a website that was talking about bees, and they offered bees for sale… They had smaller mason bees that came out of the hive in the early Springtime, and they fed from the plants and helped with the early blooming plants, to pollinate them.
They had bees that came out of hibernation when the temperature was staying in the seventies.
These worker bees helped to pollinate the fruit trees and vegetable plants. The dealer offered special bee hives for the bees and had a book that discussed how to keep the bees healthy and when to harvest them. I bought several bee hives and eighty bees for him for his Christmas present, then he carefully put the bees in the refrigerator and set the desired humidity to keep them safe! When the regular time arrived, he put the mason bee larva into their hives, and waited to see if they were going to hatch. He got frustrated when he didn’t see any bees, even though I told him to be patient. The same thing happened when the hour set of bees went out. Three years later, the people I was with and I had so many bees on our property that he was all smiles. He still harvests the bee larva once the bees are sure to be dormant, and eighty bees have turned in hundreds of them.