Recently I shared a trailer on LBRY showing just a few minutes of a bee chewing through its spun cocoon. In this post I have uploaded almost twenty minutes of content including the bee working its way out of its overwintering home. These bees are solitary and do not grow in a beehive. Nor do they produce honey, they are bees but quite different from what most people know about honey bees.
When the warm spring weather comes around, these overwintered bees will emerge from their cocoons to start exploring the world around them.
I can hear them in the video chewing through the cocoon and their mouth parts can be seen as they work their way along the body of the cocoon. They spin these before pupating into their final form as a Mason bee.
A link to the trailer I made from this footage, it was lacking sound because I forgot to turn on the external microphone.
@solominer/sneak-peak-video-of-a-mason-bee-chewing-through-their-cocoon
Sometimes I just see their antenna poking through as they work around the opening. Maybe they are starting to sense the world around them even before leaving their cocoon.
A hatched male Mason bee walks by and right over the cocoon we were observing, maybe it intentional helping to move the cocoon so the bee trapped inside the cocoon can get freed more easily.
They take their time working their way out of the cocoons, taking many hours or even over a day to free themselves. It takes them over a week to emerge once the cocoons are brought up to the correct temperature.
One of their eyes can now see through the gap in the cut open cocoon. Seeing light coming in and hitting its compound eye and some of its hairs on its head.
Animation of the bee getting closer to freeing itself. Seeing its antenna, eye and parts of its face its getting to the point where soon it will emerge from the cut open cocoon.
It seems like the bee will use its antenna to grip the ground outside to get a better hold on the cocoon. I saw their leg get out as well and sometimes they will push against the cocoons with their legs.