Yeah,I hope things work out.What temperature is your refrigerator?It seems like they should stay asleep til warmed.
I'm trying them for the first time and today a few were flying into the tubes.
The thing is though,there was about a week of warm weather in early March,the Plum trees bloomed and then colder,rainy days came and the bees missed them.They can always help with the Blueberries. Brady

I never heard of that happening. I've had bees hatching early before, but that's what the refrigerator is supposed to be for.

I also had some cocoons that I managed to save from the squirrels in there. When I checked them, I found them covered with pollen mites that weren't on them before.

I was trying to start over with new bees because mine kept reusing the old tubes and getting obliterated by the mites. This isn't going well this year.

I am not an expert on refrigerators, but I do pay attention, & I have noticed that the blueberries that we grow and freeze, for our own use, do not look so good after they have been in the fridge for a month or so. Looking at them, sealed in clear plastic bags, I can see that they have thawed partially, and been refrozen, at least once, since they were originally packed. So, ever since the 1980's, our refrigerators here in the USA have had the automatic defrost feature. And of course the marketing people will tell you that this has no effect on the quality of frozen food that is subjected to the defrost cycle. So this is just a guess, but I am thinking that maybe your Mason bees were warmed up prematurely, when the 'fridge was in automatic defrost mode.

It's a theory, ericwi. More than I can come up with.

I don't suppose keeping the bees in the freezer would hurt them. THAT ought to keep them dormant. I'd think.

I went looking for the survivors of the new bees, but they flew off and I haven't seen them since. Certainly not near the new tubes, even tho I left the box they were in.

Sorry for your troubles. I hope you can find a way to succeed. Thanks for sharing because it helps all of us learn too.

Yes, I never could have imagined they'd hatch in the fridge. Live and learn.

They don't stay in the box. Once hatched they fly off. Eat. Eventually mate. And the girls if you are lucky will return and lay eggs in the box...that you will hopefully have protected by hardware cloth from those squirrels.

I've noticed that the box or tube or whatever they hatched from exerts a very strong attraction for the bees. They come back to it if they can.

Once, I had been stripping old tubes after the bees had hatched, and when I went to where the bees were active, they followed me in swarms, lighting on me so I had to brush them off, because I had the scent of the tubes on me.

Please tell me what these tubes are and why they can't be cleaned to the point of being unfriendly to mites. I have also heard that they should be replaced every year. Are they talking about bamboo cuts, paper straws, or something else?

The tubes I was using were cardboard, with plugs in the back and paper inserts. You're supposed to pull out the inserts and replace them every year. Except they're always stuck inside the tubes and too hard to remove without crushing the cocoons.

I've tried to have fresh new ones waiting for them, but the bees always prefer the old dirty tubes because they smell like home.

This was so easy the first couple of years.

This year, I got a different type of tube from Crown Bees that you're supposed to open up and remove the cocoons more easily. I just don't know if I'll have any bees to nest in them.