Win a Native Bee House Kit Courtesy of Crown Bees

I just received a shipment of leafcutter bees in the mail the other day. Aren’t they neat? Or I should say, leafcutter bee cocoons. The silken cocoons come encased in the leafy cells the mother bee created when she laid her eggs. Unlike spring mason bees, which start flying when temperatures reach 55°F, summer leafcutter…

Linda Ly

Written by Linda Ly

Win a native bee house kit courtesy of Crown Bees

I just received a shipment of leafcutter bees in the mail the other day. Aren’t they neat?

Summer leafcutter bee cocoons

Or I should say, leafcutter bee cocoons. The silken cocoons come encased in the leafy cells the mother bee created when she laid her eggs.

Unlike spring mason bees, which start flying when temperatures reach 55°F, summer leafcutter bees like hot weather and emerge when the weather is consistently in the mid-80°Fs.

We’re moving into a week of warmer weather so I suspect they’ll be waking up just as their mason bee cousins start to wind down. I’ve had my native bee houses hanging in the garden for a few weeks and it’s such a joy to spot the mason bees buzzing around the borage and nasturtiums every day.

I love my native bee houses so much, in fact, that I’ve asked Crown Bees to give one of my readers an opportunity to own a native bee house too!

Owning a native bee house is an entirely different experience from owning a honeybee hive. Unlike honeybees, which live in highly organized colonies revolving around a single queen, native bees are solitary, so every female native bee is essentially her own “queen,” laying eggs and raising offspring without the support of fellow bees. She lives for only six weeks and nests in small holes rather than a hive. These holes can be found all over your yard in natural features like the hollow stems of pithy plants or the tunnels left by wood-boring beetles.

By hanging a native bee house in your garden, you help provide a safe place for native bees to nest and lay eggs. You also ensure that the next generation of bees will survive, since you can harvest the cocoons and clean the nests in autumn.

Raindrop native bee house with lake bed reeds

The beautiful bee house in this giveaway is a handcrafted wooden house called the Raindrop and it’s part of the Complete Raindrop Kit from Crown Bees, which includes the bee house, 80 natural lake bed reeds, 20 bee cocoons, and an accessories package for storing and protecting the cocoons (a $125 total value). This is everything you need to start keeping native bees! (And it couldn’t be easier — see my original post here.)

How to enter: Leave a comment below and tell me what kind of flowers, fruits, herbs, or vegetables you have growing in your garden this season that will feed your native bees, or could use their help being pollinated! To receive an additional entry, follow @gardenbetty on Instagram, and leave a second comment below indicating your Instagram username. You have two chances to win!

The giveaway will end at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on Friday, May 1, 2015. Winner will be drawn at random and announced the following week. Good luck!

Giveaway Rules

  1. Giveaway begins April 27, 2015 and ends May 1, 2015.
  2. No purchase is necessary. To enter, leave a comment on this blog post.
  3. Only US residents ages 18 and older are eligible to enter.
  4. Two entries allowed per person.
  5. Odds of winning are based on number of entries received.
  6. Winner will be drawn at random.
  7. If winner does not respond within 48 hours after time of contact, that entry will be forfeited and a new winner will be drawn.

By the way, Crown Bees is currently running an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for native bee education. One of their perks is a Mother’s Day special that includes a bee cabin with wooden trays and leafcutter bees, and it’s offered at a discounted price off retail. They will expedite shipping in time for Mother’s Day — a great gift to consider for your garden-loving mom, aunt, friend, or even yourself!

This post is brought to you by Crown Bees. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that support Garden Betty.

Update: A big thanks to everyone who entered!
This giveaway is now closed. The winner is Anat from Arizona.

Linda Ly

I'm a plant lover, passionate road-tripper, and cookbook author whose expert advice and bestselling books have been featured in Time, Outside, HGTV, and Food & Wine. The National Parks Cookbook is my latest book. Garden Betty is where I write about modern homesteading, farm-to-table cooking, and outdoor adventuring—all that encompass a life well-lived outdoors. After all, the secret to a good life is... Read more »

210 Comments

  2. I would love to win this, as I had been considering getting a honeybee hive prior to your post about native bees! This spring/summer, my backyard is full of fruit trees (longan, cherry, pomegranate, jujube, guava, cherimoyas, figs, plums, apples, apricots, persimmons, a variety of citrus trees, grapes, peach, pear, mulberries, etc.) as well as tons of herbs (dill, basil, thyme, oregano, cilantro, mint, and other asian medicinal herbs ), tomatoes, cucumbers, gourds, kale, beans, beet, peppers, nasturtiums, peas, ashitaba, chard, Korean yams (and their leaves yumm), strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. In the front yard we have a wide variety of flowers from my trips to the markets and nurseries. We don’t get as many pollinators as I (and my trees) would like, and we would definitely benefit from the extra pollination! Thanks so much for running this giveaway!

  3. I have been reading about bee keeping all Spring! I have purposely allowed the honeysuckle to grow at will in order to attract bees. I have 5 acres that’s partly wooded with a heavily wooded creek on one side of the land. So, plenty of water is always available for bees and numerous other animals.
    Additionally, I have wild roses and blackberry bushes that also grow along the creek.
    We have a veggie garden growing with tomatoes, 3 different types of peppers, gourds, and we allow the clover to grow freely on the open acreage. We also have pumpkins and sunflowers.
    My neighbors have acreage as well so plenty of room between us all. I would love to start a bee colony! Mississippi has great weather to boot! It would be a great learning experience for my granddaughters as well.

  4. LOVE the style of the teardrop! We have a organic backyard mini-orchard and garden, with pluots, nectarines, pears, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, citrus, apples, cherries and pineapple guavas, as well as veggies, etc. Love to support/sustain wildlife in our garden. Thank you for the opportunity!

  5. I have a small yard that I garden with my children. This year we will be adding elderberry bushes, more Echinacea, sunflowers, nasturtiums and whatever else strikes our fancy. Love your blog!

  6. What a wonderful give-away!
    We have an acre at 8200′ in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Colorado. We have two small year round greenhouse domes (18′ and 15′) that we have all sorts of vegetables and flowers growing. In the larger dome we also have a lemon tree. We grow peas, dandelion, beans, tomatoes, beets, cucumbers,
    peppers, broccoli, onions, garlic, shallots, kales, lettuces, chard, andmore planted inside those structures. The outside beds are planted with potatoes, garlic, onions, peas, beets, and awaiting the snows to leave to plant squashes, carrots, beans, and anything else I can think of. We have permanent beds full of raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb, comfrey, oregano, thyme, dill, lovage, echinacea, asparagus, and strawberries. We have planed two apple, one peach, and two small apricot trees. We have flower beds with Spring bulbs of tulips, daffodils, and purple irises. Holly hocks multiply themselves at random, two bushes of bleeding heart, and two well established lilacs. I keep planted other
    bulbs like gladiolas each year and daylillies.
    There are native bees in the area but outside of when the lemon tree blooms the majority of the bees are to be found down the hill at a neighbors house that has a half acre of flowers. I have planted wildflower seeds and scattered various bee friendly seeds all over the front of the property to attract more bees to our yard this past year and am awaiting some growth from the plants. It would be lovely to have our own bees to help pollinate so that I don’t have to hand pollinate to get fruit to set.
    Thank you for running this giveaway.

  7. At this point, I am up to about 80 fruit trees, lots of berries of all kinds, herbs, veggies, edible flowers and insect attracters and will keep planting. have been reading your blog for a few years and love what you do.

  8. I’m growing tomatoes, peppers, all sorts of greens, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and sunflowers. I would love to win a bee house!

  10. This year I am growing carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, zucchini, ginger, tepary beans, beets, garlic, peppermint, basil, and rosemary. I’m hoping to add a couple Moringa trees and more medicinal herbs like New Zealand tea tree, lemongrass, hops, lavender, comfrey, goldenseal, and bergamot! Thank you for this lovely giveaway!

  12. I grow sunflowers. Not only do the bees love them, the birds can’t wait to feast on the seeds.

  13. I have been eyeing these for awhile now, but haven’t pulled the trigger in purchasing one. I would love to win the bee cabin! I have fingerling eggplants, sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, golden tomatoes, oranges, bears breech, the list goes on–I’d love some extra pollination!

  14. I have pear, apple, apricot, cherry, and a 3 graft peach, plum and nectarine tree. Bluberries, sage and rosemary are good perennials as well as leeks that I allow to flower. The bees love it all. Housing bees would be a wonderful help for the bees and my garden. I have fresh water and mud in hopes that mason bees will make a home.

  16. What a great opportunity! My veggie garden has tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, and cucumber. Also there are blueberries, raspberries, citrus, morning glories, irises, and an herb garden with sage, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, mint, and oregano. I’ve been eyeing the bee houses since your first post!

  18. I’ve been planting lots of native to Michigan wild flowers to my bee and butterfly garden. While leaving in lots of space for natural growth of grasses, purple deadnettles and the like all around my herb garden and veg patch.

  20. Most of my yard is very shaded due to old growth trees. We do get full sun on my front porch so I’ve done small scale container gardening each of the last 3 years to show my son where fruits and veggies come from. I have 4 backyard chickens that eat pesky bugs, till my back yard, and turn my compost pile. Native bees could help pollinate the many shade loving flowers I have throughout my yard.

  21. So exciting! I’ve been eyeing one of these kits for awhile! This year we are planting the usual veggies and herbs plus some butterflyweed, lupine, and other pollinator faves. Plus prepping some space for fruit trees–cherries, peaches, and more, I can’t wait!

  24. We all kinds of veggies growing! Tomatoes (cherokee purple, white wonder, georgia streak, roma among others), some fun varieties of peppers, lemon cucumbers, orange watermelon, and all kinds of the normal stuff. Since we’re in a community garden plot, there’s a bunch of other plots for the bees to play in too!

  25. I have a veggie garden, notably need the bees for squash and cukes, but also have two apple trees, a pear tree, and two cherries. Plan to get one of these bee houses!

  27. This is my first season of gardening and so far I have added two types of tomatoes- cherry and roma, strawberries, so many herbs, red peppers, lavender, marigolds, a willow acacia, blue Palo Verde, Mexican petunias, Texas sage, and three other types of shade flowers of which I don’t know the names. I am not certain which need bees to pollinate but if the don’t have enough work in my yard, my neighbor has a great garden, as well!

  28. Awesome post! I love Crown Bees & would love to give pollinators a safe place in my yard. I am making my first ever butterfly garden this year, and I am hoping to attract other pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds as well. I have a mix of plants growing in my yard right now that includes, fruit bushes (blackberry, blueberry and raspberry) A vegetable garden that includes tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, scarlet runner beans and peppers. My herb garden with chives, mint, chamomile, borage & many others. A mix of vines that covers my garden fence (clematis, morning glories, cardinal climber) A variety of perennial and annual flowers that include bee balm, zinnias, sunflowers and dahlias. This would be an awesome addition to my garden, I am always looking to help pollinators in any way I can! Thank you for this giveaway. 🙂

    Angie Rose

  32. Growing sweet corn, flint/dent corn, melons, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, greasy beans, eggplants, kiwi berries, marionberries, raspberries, Marshall and Seascape strawberries, blueberries, persimmons, grapes, plums, cherries, pears, Asian pears, apples, peaches, mulberries, potatoes, radishes, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, spinach, kale, lettuces, mustard, figs, gooseberries, sunflowers, basil, various medicinal flowers and herbs, and lots of ornamental flowers. Would love to see more pollinators!

    I’m following on instagram as jjonak

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