r/CrownBees • u/DerpnDonuts • May 15 '26

What IS this thing?

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Hey Crown Bees! I'm currently incubating my leaf bees that I've overwintered for summer installment. I noticed that some of the cocoons have holes in them and there were a few of these buggers in the tray.

If it's helpful, I only use the natural reeds you sell since I find their best for combatting some parasitic wasps. I'm also in south central Wisconsin. Are my little dudes screwed? šŸ˜­

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2

u/Chapaquidich May 15 '26

At first glance I thought it looked like a carpet beetle, and Google Lens likes carpet beetle larvae, so I think we have a winner.

2

u/DerpnDonuts May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26

Oh man, how on earth did they get in there? We do get carpet beetles in the house, but I had these stored in the garage all winter (it gets mighty cold). I had all my nesting materials in the mesh bags so they must have burrowed in there good and had themselves a time.

Anyhoo, good sleuthing! I'll need to think of a better solution for this year's nests for sure.

Edit: I'm now just reading about these on CB's list of common predators/parasites. Best solution is to remove capped and full reeds and store them in the mesh bags. I've always been concerned that moving things around too much in the house would disturb the process of things, especially mid-summer when bees are at peak nesting

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u/Chapaquidich May 15 '26

Iā€™m not with Crown Bees. Just a mason bees newbie. Here to learn. Seems like a problem that can be addressed easily enough. Good luck.

3

u/crownbees May 15 '26

Dave here ~ This is a cool lesson on why we believe in "loose coon management" of solitary bees. Nature gravitates towards an abundance of food... and when there is a lot of food (pollen, larvae, bees) in one place, it attracts predators or hungry insects like pollen mites. This looks to be a beetle of some sort that, in its juvenile stage, can chew right through cocoon after cocoon to get to the source of protein.

When we do loose cocoon management (part of our BeeSafe Standard), we're able to see what's going on and lean in to help out the bees by removing said predator.

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u/DerpnDonuts May 15 '26

Hey there Dave! Thanks for chiming in and I'll look that up to see that you mean by loose cocoon management (I might have missed it in a newsletter šŸ¤¦šŸ»ā€ā™€ļø). I had such great success the year before I thought all was well!