Bees flying in with leaves

[Sunrisemike]

Never seen this before, Bees keep flying into the greenhouse carrying leaf fragments. I just watched one disappear into the bottom of a small flower pot. Strange behaviour or what.

[Bugtownboy]

Leaf-cutting/cutter Bees ?

https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/leaf-cutting-bees

[Joeboy]

We have one down the bottom of the garden. Second year this tiny wee nook in a cedar bench has this breed of bee in. Lovely to watch.

[pudding]

Yup, the mason/mining bees have finished filling our bee hotels a few weeks ago with mud and eggs/pollen, yesterday the leaf cutter bees arrived.

[Sunrisemike]

Yes of course, haven't seen them before. Poking the leaf into the bottom of a small flower pot that has a drainage slot on the side.

[NikoV6]

Yup, the mason/mining bees have finished filling our bee hotels a few weeks ago with mud and eggs/pollen, yesterday the leaf cutter bees arrived.

Saw bee hotels for sale the other day, happy to stick a load up around the place, do they really make a difference?

[pudding]

Yeah they sure do. We bought our first about 4/5 years ago -

and I made another one last year, just out of some offcuts of timber and some spare slate for the roof -


As you can see, a lot of the holes are filled with mud now, so I made another 2 a month go -




And these have already been clocked by the bees and are started to be used. Doesn't need to be anything fancy or expensive as you can tell from my ones I've knocked together, the bees dont care!

[Gareth J]

They've filled a few of the holow topped wheel nuts on our van that isn't getting a lot of use.

[Windbag]

What size holes are best?

[pudding]

2-10mm is what it says here - https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/b ... ee%20house. Think i did 2 sizes of 8mm and 10mm.