{"id":2436,"date":"2020-06-09T08:47:14","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T15:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jcmgf.org\/mg2\/?p=2436"},"modified":"2021-06-14T00:06:28","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T07:06:28","slug":"leaf-cutter-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/leaf-cutter-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaf Cutter Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

submitted by\u00a0Plantnut nerdus<\/span><\/em>
\nwritten by Lloyd Eighme, retired entomologist Washington State University<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may have wondered what insect cuts such neat circles from the edges of
\nleaves on your rose bush. It makes the leaves look a bit ragged, but I hope you
\nwill forgive the little leafcutter bees that do that because they are some of our best
\npollinators. We need all of the insect pollinators we can get since honeybees are
\nnot as abundant as they used to be. The leafcutter bees are in the same family
\n(Megachilidae) as the orchard mason bees that use mud for their nest, but we hear
\na lot about the Orchard Mason bees, so we will skip them and take a look at the
\nother bees in their family.
\nLeafcutter bees are active from early spring to late summer, so their pollinating
\nactivities are valuable to many different flowering plants, whereas the orchard
\nmason bees live only a few weeks in the spring, sometimes completing their work
\neven before all of the apple trees have bloomed. Our native leafcutter bees are
\nnever very abundant. They do not live together in colonies. Each female must
\nsearch out a small hole or cavity in which to build a nest. I have seen them using
\nthe unfilled holes in the nest blocks I put out for orchard mason bees. Some
\npeople have complained about bees building their nests under and between
\nshingles on the house or in the grooves of the wood siding. A few of these nests
\nhave been brought to the clinic and they are obviously the work of leafcutter
\nbees.
\nThe female leafcutter bee uses her scissor-like mandibles (jaws) to cut nearly
\nperfect circles 1\/4-1\/2 inch in diameter out of the edge of a leaf. She pushes these
\ncircles into the nest hole to form the end of a brood chamber. Then she cuts
\noblong pieces of leaf that she rolls up like a short tube to form the walls. She
\ngathers pollen and nectar from blossoms and stores enough in the cell to feed one
\nlarva that will hatch from the egg she lays there. Then she cuts more leaf circles to
\nclose that chamber and serve as the bottom partition for the next chamber. She
\nwill continue making leaf cells until the tube is filled. A three inch hole may have
\nsix cells, each with one egg. After the larva is fully grown it spins a soft silk
\ncocoon in which to spend the winter as a pupa and emerges as an adult bee next
\nspring.
\nThe alfalfa seed growers in eastern Washington learned many years ago that our
\nresident leaf cutter bees are much better pollinators of alfalfa blossoms than the
\nhoneybees. They tried many ways to increase the bee populations such as drilling
\nholes in fence posts and barns until a bright (or lazy!) graduate student thought of
\nusing drinking straws in nest boxes for the bees. The increase in production of
\nalfalfa seed per acre was phenomenal and you can still see nest boxes of straws in
\nthe alfalfa fields at blossom time.
\nSome master gardeners have collected bees and brought them to me for the insect
\ncollection and we have several kinds there for you to look at. I am sure there are
\nmany more kinds in Skagit County that we do not have as yet. We need to
\nprotect and encourage these valuable pollinators in every way we can. If you see
\nsome of these little bees at work and can collect a specimen (do not take very
\nmany!) bring them to me so we can discover what we have. Do not put bee
\nspecimens in alcohol, just put them in the freezer to kill and preserve them. Once
\nwe discern what kinds of leafcutter bees we have in Skagit County then we can
\ndetermine what flowers they are pollinating and hopefully find ways to help them
\nincrease their population.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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submitted by\u00a0Plantnut nerdus written by Lloyd Eighme, retired entomologist Washington State University You may have wondered what insect cuts such neat circles from the edges of leaves on your rose bush. It makes the leaves look a bit ragged, but I hope you will forgive the little leafcutter bees that do that because they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[142,37,39,38],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-142","tag-bee-colony-collapse","tag-insects","tag-research","classic-edited"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5825,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions\/5825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmgf.myparkpack.com\/mg2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}