Nancy Sullivan

Important to note that corn does NOT contain folic acid, essential for the healthy development of the neural tube of a fetus.
In places where corn is a primary food source, there is a disproportionate number of children with some kind of neural tube deficit, like spina bifida.
Nutritionists recommend that women who eat a lot of tortillas as opposed to other sources of carbohydrates take prenatal vitamins to insure enough folic acid.  Because of poverty, they often don't have adequate access to leafy green vegetables, seafood or fruits and may not eat enough beans, all of which are excellent sources of folic acid.

I just checked the crownbees.com website and it looks fine. You can order complete kits from them with a house, the tubes, etc., as well as cocoons.

In reading up on mason bees, I learned that plastic straws are BAD for the tubes, because you can get mold inside them.. Rolled up paper, using a pencil as a guide, is probably better. They now have tubes of slightly varying diameters which can be more or less unrolled to harvest the cocoons in the fall and store them in the fridge over the winter to prevent predation and insure the majority survive. If you really want to be fancy, you can also buy wooden mason bee houses kind of like mini clamshells.

Check out Crown Bees, they seem to be the leader in the field.

A little late, however, given your 2012 post...

Very late post to this quesry.

I have chix and muscovies in the same area with no problem. They mostly ignore each other. For some reason this winter for hte first time ever three female ducks have taken to getting into the chicken house at night. It is raised on stilts. Rain, snow, etc., really doesn't bother them, so this is a little perplexing.

In terms of water, the ducks will turn clean water filthy in a heartbeat- it is amazing how fast they can do it! I am convinced with the muscovies a lot of what I see in the water is actually food. They are probably really filter feeders- their beaks have little serrations that they sieve water through once they've taken a bite of food- which would explain why there appears to be a layer of food on the bottom of the water container, which is a kiddy pool in the summer.

This is, of course, a huge waste of water, since I don't feel like taking it out bucket by bucket to water and nitrogen-enrich different parts of the garden daily... there are a couple of YouTubes on "Duckoponic" systems, where you run the dirty water through beds with plants the ducks will eventually eat, then cycle it back as clean water for the ducks. THat is my goal for next summer.

I have muscovies and also honey bees. They pretty much avoid each other, although one duck nested under a hive, (it was on a raised stand), for a while- pretty safe place, I thought!

Even when I had a hive die off at the end of the winter and I cleaned it out, neither ducks nor chix touched the corpses. The bees will also drink from the ducks' water and I have never seen a duck snap at one.

I don't think you need to be concerned. I don't know whether the ducks realize honey bees are dangerous or if they don't like their general fuzziness, but they don't find them tasty at all.