A month or so ago I harvested my Mason bee cocoons. While opening up the bee boards I found myself a Leaf cutter bee home. You may have seen my previous post on this topic, though it was using a low quality camera. Just some pictures from my smart phone. But I had my nicer DSLR Lumix GH3 on me and took a few pictures on it as well. Wanted to share some of them and talk more about these kind of bees.
| Lumix GH3 | |
|---|---|
| Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm Macro lens | |
| none | |
| f/10 | |
| 1/40 sec | |
| 1600 | |
| Visual Light | |
| 380 through 700 nanometers | |
| North Georgia USA. |
This is the first year I have had such a bee, normally I only get Mason bees. So having a Leaf cutter bee make a home in my boards was quite the surprise. Both the Mason bee and Leaf cutter bee are similar, both are docile and solitary. Both do not have hives, though the way they build their nests is what sets them apart.
The Leaf cutter bee will do as its name suggests, cut pieces of leaves, form them and then bring them into the nest where they glue them together using propolis. What you get is what we see in these pictures.
It looks like many different kinds of leaves are used in the construction of their homes. The different colors, and textures make me think these Leaf cutter bees visit all kinds of trees and bushes to harvest little pieces of leaves.
We can see propolis that these bees use to form it. I was expecting the home to fall apart when removed from the bee boards, but instead it all held together.
I took them and placed them in mesh bags, once the risk of frost is over I will put them outside and let them spawn.
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