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I’m happy to report that this year there have been up to three leafcutters at any one time nesting in the bee houses, which is a huge improvement on the situation last year where no bees nested at all! I think it likely that this is down to having moved the bee houses to a better location on a little wall at the end of the decking outside my studio. 

This summer I have taken thousands of photographs of the leafcutters as well as other solitary bees and bumble bees, and have been busy tagging, editing and organising them all. I now have a good selection of shots of the bees involved in all sort of activities. Over the coming months I’ll be working on drawings from these, which will eventually be used to illustrate the book on the leafcutters. I’ll post progress on the drawings as I complete them, and write in more detail about the bees and what I’ve observed over the summer. But to begin with, here is a selection of photographs to illustrate the story of the leafcutters this year.

The site of the nests, and some old cells:

Above: The last time we saw the leafcutters, the first of the bees was searching for a suitable nest site and clearing out old leaf debris from one of the bamboo stems. Above left is a shot of the site of the bee houses this year, at the end of the decking on a little wall. Some of the herbs I planted for the bees can be seen to the left of the shot. The chair directly in front of the nests is where I rest my camera when I’m pestering the bees! Centre left:The first leafcutter arrived early in the summer and cleared out some of the old nest material from previous years.

Above right:These two shots are of leaf cells from earlier years. The bees from these nests did not hatch out when the time came, and I dissected the cardboard tubes in which they had been laid to investigate. I’ve included the pictures again here to show the construction of the nests. This is the kind of leaf debris which the bee was clearing from the bamboo stems. You can see how pieces of leaf are used to make individual cells, into each of which is laid a single egg provisioned with nectar and pollen collected from the garden. This year the leafcutters did not use the cardboard tubes, although these were used by smaller bees. The earliest leafcutter first made a nest in the bamboo stalks, and when all those of suitable size were filled she moved on to the bee logs which I had drilled earlier in the year. For information about the types of bee houses I have and how to make and site them in your own garden, see this page.

Rose leaves and the bees:

Far left:this is the kind of thing you may have seen in your garden if you have leafcutters nesting nearby. These bees are particularly fond of roses, and cut these tell-tale elongated and circular holes in the leaves. I don’t particularly mind as they don’t seem to harm the plants too much – much worse things seem to afflict my poor roses! Centre left: if you look closely you can see the bee working away on this leaf. The picture centre rightshows how close were some of the rose leaves to the nest site itself. However, the bees are very particular in choosing their leaves and will sometimes fly quite a distance to gather specific material, even though there are what seem to be perfectly good leaves in the vicinity of the nests. I’ll write more about what I’ve observed of their selection process for nesting material at a later date as it is fascinating. Far right is a view of one of the logs which was used this year. Almost all of the holes in this log were filled by a single bee, who was very patient with my photographing of her. The sequence in which they were filled can be seen from the differing colours of the leaves as they dried over time in the sun.

Cutting the leaves:

Above: These bees have been nesting in my garden for a few years now but until this summer I had never seen any bees cutting leaves. Here is just one series of shots I was lucky enough to get of the bees in action. You can see the way she cuts and rolls the piece, ready to fly back to the nest. These elongated pieces are pressed into the sides of the tubes to form the sides of the cells, while circular pieces of leaf are used to seal the ends. 

Back at the nest, she seals a row of cells:

Above left: The bee arrives back at the nest with a piece of leaf. Once there she will work with the leaves, either constructing the sides of the cells, or in sealing the ends. In the two shots above centre we see her manipulating a piece of leaf into place with her jaws before pushing it with her head and nibbling and pressing it with her jaws. She is sealing the end of one of the rows of cells in the drilled log. In the above right picture you can see what a marvellous job she makes of pressing and cutting the leaf pieces into place. She uses many layers of leaves in this final seal, flying to and from the roses to gather each piece. The innermost of these discs are worked hard into place, while towards the outside she sometimes only tacks a few final pieces into place.

Feeding and foraging:

Above:The leafcutters lay a single egg into each leaf cell, and provide their offspring, who will not emerge until next summer, with a mixture of pollen and nectar gathered from flowers. Here is a selection of pictures of leafcutters in the garden this summer. Only the one on the right can I be certain is one of ‘my’ nesting bees, as she returns to the log carrying a load of pollen on the hairs of her abdomen. The other bees I think were visitors to the garden but were not nesting here. Which brings me to the question:

Which kind of leafcutter?

You may remember I ordered a back issue of British Wildlife with an identification guide to the leafcutter species. I am fairly sure I have two species, since there are obvious differences in the colour of the hairs on the underside of the abdomen. I am still undecided which species is which, and will post some closer shots of the bees soon, as some of you experts out there may be able to help with identification.

The bees have not finished work this year yet. I thought they had, since we had a some days of rain and cooler weather. It seemed that summer was over and the bees were gone. But over this past weekend there has been sunshine and I was surprised and happy to see the last of the leafcutters carrying a piece of leaf into the bee log. Yesterday morning she was sunning herself on the shelf in front of the nests. I’m not sure how long they usually work, and I expect it probably depends on the weather. The bee who filled the most tubes and features in the majority of the photographs has definitely gone, but this final bee seems to be very busy still, so let’s hope the sunshine lasts.

Meanwhile, inside the nests I expect that the first of the eggs has hatched and the new generation of bees which will chew their way out of the nests next spring is eating away at the food inside their little cells.

Some further pages of this site which you may find of interest:

| How to build bee houses | Plants for bees | Drawings of bees|

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All images ©Christine Farmer 2009-2011
Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

Once again there seems to be a huge amount to report both on the drawings, and the activities of the bees in the garden. For those waiting for an update on the leaf-cutter bees, there is a post coming soon, with many photographs! There are also a few pen and ink drawings of leaf-cutter bees below. For those looking for my drawings, this post covers those I’ve been working on since my last update. I’m still in the experimental stage, as you will see, but eventually I will have drawings of bees for sale, as well as illustrations for the planned book about the bees.

The materials I’m using can be seen in the first picture below left, and are: the Gillott 404 nib and dip pen, Windsor & Newton Liquid Indian Ink, a Windsor & Newton Cotman fine brush, distilled water, a lint-free cloth to clean the nib, blotting paper, and a mixing palette for the ink wash. All the drawings shown in this blog post are on Bristol Board: some on Strathmore smooth Bristol board which has a nice off-white tone, while others including this large white foxglove drawing are on the bright white Canson Bristol Board.

An outdoor sketch of white foxglove, with bee visitors:

Above: For this drawing I left the studio and took my pen and ink kit onto the decking where I had a good view of a white foxglove which was being visited by many bumble bees. Above centre and right: two closer views of the drawing. I sketched the foxglove itself, adding a quick impression of each bee visiting the flowers during the hour or so I was there. As you can see the bees tend to repeat the same pattern of flight, visiting each flower in turn usually for a quick inspection and only sometimes entering a flower for pollen and nectar.

A purple foxglove with raindrops and a bee:

Above: For this drawing I worked in the studio from a reference photograph on the computer screen. I have found that this is more successful than working from a printed photograph, as it allows me to zoom into the image when necessary to check a detail. Somehow the light in the computer screen also helps to reveal some quality which seems to be lost when something is printed. For this drawing I sketched the outlines in ink, then using distilled water and a fine brush drew the ink out of the lines to create shading. This is possible with Windsor & Newton Liquid Indian ink as it is not waterproof. For the darker areas I added more and more ink in washes.  

Another outdoor experiment: bees on thyme:

Above left: I sat for a while in the sunshine watching three or four honey bees working on a thyme plant just outside my studio. This time I tried to capture the positions and activities of the bees, and left the plant as a few lines which indicate the position of the main stems. Not surprisingly, I found drawing these bees very difficult – they are so small and move quickly, and there is hardly time to capture more than the position of the wings or a leg. However, after a short while the patterns the bees make in their explorations become clear. I intend to repeat this experiment again soon as I feel I was just getting somewhere when the paper became too crowded with bees to continue. Above right: detail of one of the bees from this drawing.

These same bees, drawn at the computer screen:

Above left: I have been taking many pictures of bees this summer, and these help me to understand the way these insects are put together. So I took plenty of photographs of the bees on the thyme which featured in the drawing above. Here I am working from the computer screen, as I did for the drawing of the purple foxglove above. A combination of observation, drawing the bees ‘live’, and working from photographs in this way is helping me to get a good result with the drawings. Above centre and right: more detail of these sketches. As you can see I am using very little wash on these bees, and concentrating on the lines.

A leaf-cutter bee carrying a leaf:

Above: A leaf-cutter bee carries a furled piece of rose leaf into its nest. As with some of the other drawings above, I’m working here from a photograph I took this summer displayed on the the computer screen. The drawing is in the same materials as before, and on Bristol Board. This is a nice preview for you bee fans out there, as I have many photographs to share with you of this bee building her nest. I drew this completely in pen without any pencil sketch, as in all the drawings above. I wasn’t too concerned about the exactness of the anatomy, but was rather aiming for some animation and variety of line.

And finally, perhaps too much detail:

Above: Once again, as in an earlier post on my bee drawings, I have been wavering between a freer drawing style and recording exact details as in this drawing of a leaf-cutter bee at rest. This drawing was traced from an earlier sketch – hence the pencil marks. I hoped in this way to get a more anatomically correct result, but I perhaps took things a little too far in getting out my magnifying light and trying to record every single hair! The result looks a little stationary even for a resting bee, I think. However, I do like the close-up view above right, so I believe I’ll save the magnifier for when I’m drawing a detailed portion of a bee rather than an entire specimen. If you click on the thumbnail image above right, you will see that it’s possible with the Gillott 404 nib to stipple and produce lines as fine as those with the Rapidograph.

So at the moment I’m working on something midway between the “correctness” of this final leafcutter drawing and the animation and freer style of the bee carrying the leaf. I will continue to use the dip-pens as I’m quite pleased with some of the results I’m getting. 

The next blog post will be mainly about the leaf-cutter bees and what they’ve been up to since we saw them last. Thanks for reading, and thanks also to those who have taken the time to comment or to email me about their bees. There are a lot of people with leaf-cutters in their garden, it seems!

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You may remember that last year I had very little success with my solitary bee houses, and was surprised when a leaf cutter bee emerged from one of the old sealed tubes a few weeks ago. I put the lack of nesting last year down to the boxes being sited on my wobbly decking, and this Spring moved the bee houses to a more stable base, and hoped for the best.

And now, just a few weeks after I saw this first bee emerge, I seem to have three species of leaf cutter in my garden. I have never tried to identify my leaf cutters to species before, and it is quite difficult with these little bees. There are seven species of leaf cutter (Megachile) in this country. This site has photographs of all of them, but I’m still dithering over which is which in my garden! However, I am hoping to be able to identify them properly soon, having requested a back copy of British Wildlife Magazine (vol. 10, no. 6), which contains, I’m told, the best guide to leaf cutters currently available. Hopefully when this arrives I’ll be closer to knowing the species of my bees – so long as they can be identified from photographs, rather than via dead specimens and microscopes.

So, let me show you what I’ve seen in the garden so far!

A surprise hatching and an early arrival at the nests:

Above left: My unexpected hatching emerged from a narrow bamboo tube on 20th June, in need of a clean-up. You can read more about this hatching, with photographs, in a previous blog post. Above centre and right: Two days later I saw this bee with pollen all over its face, going in and out of one of the cardboard tubes of the bee house. From its size I would say it was the same bee. It has now been going back and forth into this tube for almost two weeks, carrying pollen on the hairs of the lower half of its abdomen, as can be seen in the right hand photograph. The presence of these hairs is an identifying feature of leaf cutter bees, but also of other types of bee such as the Osmia (see comments). These are the first few pictures I managed to caputure of this bee which is very quick in flight, coming out of the tube like a bullet out of a gun, so they are none too sharp!

After two weeks of observation I have yet to see it enter the tube with a leaf piece, and it is still working away deep in the tube, building up its nest slowly. Hopefully when it is finished I will be able to see what it’s building the cells from. It must be using very small pieces of leaf that I can’t see as it whizzes past. And I have still not captured on camera its front end as it enters the tube. Most of the leafcutters I have ever tried to photograph approach the tubes with great pieces of leaf and fly uncertainly at times, allowing a bumbling photographer a fair crack at a shot. This little bee flies almost straight into the tube!

Update: see pictures below and comments for a probable identification for this little bee as Osmia.

A beauty in the garden:

Above: Two days after I had noticed the small leafcutter had moved into the bee tubes, I spotted this bee on the pink flowers of one of the succulent plants. This is quite obviously a different type of bee, which is much larger and fatter than the one nesting in the tubes. I have seen this bee in the garden now for a couple of weeks, either on this succulent or on the borage flowers, but I have not seen it nesting or collecting leaves for its nest.

Another leafcutter at the bee houses:

Above left: A day or so after I first saw the beautiful fat leaf cutter on the succulents, I saw this similarly-sized bee investigating the bee houses. I only had a brief view of it the first few days. The weather wasn’t particularly good, and it was buzzing around and then flying off before I could even focus on it properly, as you can see. The thorax looked white with either pollen or sawdust from the tubes, so I could not be sure if it was the same bee a little the worse for its travel or an entirely different bee. It took me several days of watching both bees, and some much better photographs to decide that this was most probably a third leaf cutter species.

Above right and far right: The bees have a choice of tube to nest in at the bee houses. There are the cardboard tubes from the Oxford Bee Company (available at Wiggly Wigglers here), bamboo canes and sweet cicely stems of various thicknesses, some bored logs, and a bee block (far right). I’ll give a run-down on which bee has settled into which tube in a later post. You can see how close the bee homes are to my garden chair, which illustrates how safe it is to encourage them to your garden.

A bit of a clear out:

Above: On a sunny morning a few days later, I found the second fat bee clearing out one of the old bamboo canes which had been nested in a previous year. You may wonder why it is that these bees seem to prefer the labour of emptying a tube which has been nested in previously to using a fresh, unused tube, as I do! It is a task of several hours to remove all the old debris from a used tube, when there are what seems perfectly good clear tubes right near by. Above left: here you see her kicking some of the smaller bits of leaf and other debris back behind her onto the floor. The centre pictures show her dragging out a larger piece of old leaf. She flies a few feet from the nest to drop these larger pieces away from the site, but as there are often several pieces together due to the way the nest is constructed, some pieces fall below. This far right photograph shows the curvature of the old leaf pieces which were cut and positioned by a bee in previous years. More on the construction of these nests can be seen in this earlier post.

In the interests of identification, the second from left shot above shows that this bee has dark hairs on the last two segments of her abdomen, which is different from the all golden or yellow hairs on the ‘succulent bee’ above. This is the kind of detail which I am hoping will help me to identify the species when I receive my guide.

Above left: While all this clearing was taking place, the first leafcutter was zipping in and out of the cardboard tube just above this bee’s head. The smaller bee can just be seen poking it’s head out tentatively at one point. Generally speaking leaf cutters, as many other solitary bees including the miner bees, will live side-by-side and seem actually to prefer it to nesting alone, despite their ‘solitary’ name. However, I have noticed the bees having small spats, and I will describe some of these in a later blog post. The picture above left shows quite clearly the considerable difference in size between these two bees, which is one of the things I find difficult to envisage from descriptions in identification guides.

And some exploring – uncertain where to nest?

Above: After excavating the bamboo for quite some time, the bee decided to explore all the other options in the bee house. I don’t know whether she had found some problem with the bamboo, or what reason there was for this, since she eventually went back to finish clearing and start laying in the original place. But here you see her exploring the sweet cicely stems, and the cardboard tubes which were quite a squeeze for this bee, while the smaller leaf cutter can actually turn round inside these tubes. She then got herself covered in sawdust while exploring the drilled logs, and lastly exploring the bee block.

She also flew over the top of the nests several times and all around it, and then flew all around me to make sure I was not a threat. Eventually she began to settle again in her bamboo tube, which is where we will find her in a future post, since this one has become so long.

In the meantime, it’s still not too late to set up some tubes, or build a solitary bee home yourself. It really is worthwhile, since these bees do so many interesting things you can see right up close, and they are very unlikely to sting, and do not swarm or attack – see the bee pages for more information:

| Bee Pages | All about Bee Houses|

Update: Unexpected hatching bee a probable Osmia.

Above: Thanks to Alan who kindly commented on the photographs in this post it seems very likely that this small bee is not a ‘leaf cutter’ but another bee which uses leaves to construct its nest - an Osmia. See the comments for Alan’s ideas on this, in which he describes the way this bee uses leaves to construct its nest. The photographs above seem to confirm this identification. Above left: I managed to retrieve the plug which the first bee had pushed aside in hatching, and on close inspection it does indeed appear to have been made from chewed leaves (centre left). This is supported by the centre right picture, which shows one of these bees entering a tube with a tiny piece of leaf, which is not big enough to seal a tube on its own, and would need ‘stitching’ together in some way. Far right: The end sealing of this year’s nest appears to be of the same construction – chewed leaves.

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Well I’ve been very busy drawing my ink bees and learning how to photograph insects! I have quite a bit to update, as ever, but for now I thought I’d report on an unexpected hatching at the leafcutter bee nests.

After the leaf cutter bees hatched last year, there was just a little interest in the nests before they were abandoned. I wrote in this post that I thought that vibrations from the decking had put off the bees from using my nests, and earlier this year I relocated them onto a stone wall which I built for the purpose. And hoped to at least get some bees nesting again this year.

I’ve had quite a few people asking in the past week whether they should start investigating their bee tubes, as they had not seen any hatch and it seemed to be getting quite late in the year, the leaf-cutters usually having hatched by now. Unfortunately I couldn’t make any comparison with my bees, as I thought I had none waiting to hatch after last year’s abandonment of the nests. However, this morning I noticed for the first time some leaf-cutters were using my new nest site, and I settled down to see if I could get any photographs. But it was late afternoon and the sun was not on the nest entrances, so things were quite dark and difficult for bee photography. And I’d forgotten just how fast these bees move! I resigned myself to no good photographs today, but will try again in the morning when the light should be better and in the right direction.

I haven’t seen any holes in my rose leaves yet, and none of the three bees I saw flying into the tubes were carrying leaf pieces, but were covered on their lower bodies with pollen. But as I observed the tubes I was surprised to see a shuffling in one of the old bamboo tubes which I thought had been laid into and not hatched two years ago (from the pen mark on the edge of the bamboo which I used to keep track of which tubes were sealed in 2009). It seemed as if the old plug, which I was sure was two years old, was being shoved aside by something inside the bamboo. Fascinated, I started photographing the tube, and was completely surprised when the jaws of a bee appeared.

I can’t imagine that this bee has been in there two years, so I must have missed this particular tube being re-used last summer. What a marvellous surprise, and how unfortunate that the light was so bad – almost every shot is blurry! However, I think you can just see enough to make out that the bee pushes the old plug away, rather than eating its way out in the usual manner. It then rests for a while, covered in old pollen and looking very unlike a leafcutter to my eyes (see note below). It was quite aware that I was there, and looked at me from several angles as I attempted to hold the camera still enough to get a decent shot in the poor light.

After a while the bee retreated into the bamboo, and emerged several minutes later looking slightly cleaner. It then came out of the tube, popped into another and turned round, having little clean-ups every now and then. After a while it was looking more like a hairy leafcutter, and took one final short rest on the nest before flying off into some nearby bushes and out of my sight.

Just a note on the date. I normally say my leafcutters emerge towards the end of the first week of June, so I would say that the bees are slightly late this year. So if you are someone wondering whether to start prodding your nests in case there are bees trapped along the tube, perhaps hold off!? Please leave comments below if you have bees hatching or not hatching or beginning to lay. I do have quite a few visitors looking for bee information and you may help someone along the way.

It’s not too late to build or set up some bee nests yourself this year. These are wonderful insects for children to observe as they are very unlikely to sting, and do not swarm. Read more about solitary bees on the Bee Pages:

| Bee Pages | 

Update: This bee has now nested in the bee houses, and from the nature of its nest it can be identified as an Osmia – see this post.

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I wrote earlier in the year about miner bees mating in the bamboo, and wondered whether they would move in to the garden to dig their nests. At the end of that previous post you may have seen that yes, they began to colonise some of the ground where I had seen a ‘mysterious hole’! There were I think four types of miner bees around the bamboo in March, however just one type nested, below the Woodruff, in soil that is quite sandy.

Miner bees are solitary bees, meaning that they do not live in hives or communities, and each female builds and provisions her own individual nest. However, these like many other solitary bees, do like to build their nests in close proximity, as can be seen under the woodruff in the pictures below (click on thumbnails for a closer look):

The miner bee nest site:

Above left: Three nest entrances, near to the plants so that other than in heavy rain, they are sheltered from droplets. Above centre left: A closer view of some of the nest entrances. These tunnels, which are about the width of a pencil, are dug down into the soil several inches, and many side-chambers are excavated, into which the female lays her eggs, sealing them with food she has provided for the development of the young bee. Above centre right: During particuarly wet weather the bees seem to seal off the nests near the surface with a little chewed material. On drier days they will pull over a leaf or a small piece of wood or clump of earth to cover the entrance. Above right: this nest is alone at the side of the path, but has the same kind of bee nesting in it. You can quite clearly see the little mound of excavated material, which has a characteristic texture.

Leaving the nest and foraging:

Above left: It took several days for the bees to get used to me poking my lens near their nests. At first they would stay in the entrance to the nest if they spotted me. A combination of their getting used to the camera, and my learning to keep down nearer the earth so that they didn’t see me until they were half out of the nest allowed me to finally get some shots of the bees in the entrance ways. To the right of this bee is a large clump of earth which she rolls over the entrance at night or in poorer weather, and sometimes when she leaves the nest. Above centre left: A bee leaves the nest. They do move quite quickly, and in order to get a shot of them leaving one has about a second. They spend another fifteen minutes or so away from the nest gathering pollen, and then return and enter the nest even more quickly (see below). Then you have about five minutes to wait while the bee unloads her pollen before she will again come to the surface and you have another opportunity to take a photograph. If you are able to spend enough time by the nests you will be able to time one and another bee’s coming and going so that you can get several opportunities for photographs in half an hour. However, it does require an awful lot of patience! Above right: Two shots of a bee gathering pollen. I don’t know which flowers the bees were using at first, as they were not gathering anything from my garden; even though the woodruff was close by, they did not show an interest in it. I did catch this one bee on a yellow poppy, but this is the only time for weeks when I saw them feeding in my garden.

Returning to the nest:

Above left: Some of the nest entrances are down in the earth right inside the plants themselves, and this means that the bee has to make several passes over the woodruff in order to locate the nest. As you can see in these shots the bee has collected pollen all over her legs, and this is how they appear on their return. In the first shot she is flying back and forth trying to locate the nest, and in the second picture she has found the way, and is climbing down the plants towards the nest entrance. Bees leaving nests underneath the plants also make a few zig-zagging passes over the plants just before they leave, which would seem to allow them to remember where the nests are in the tangle of foliage. Above right: a bee lands in open ground and luckily for me she had left a lump of earth over her nest, allowing me less than a second to take a shot before she disappears inside! More usually they are quicker than this, and I have plenty of blurred photographs as I try to follow the bee and focus quickly.

Most of these shots were taken with my old compact camera, some with my new Canon compact camera. In later posts I’ll show you some of the images I’m getting with my DSLR and new macro lens.

More photographs of bees as well as illustrations and drawings can be found on the
| Bee Pages |

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Here are my latest drawings of the bees. Earlier posts showed my sketches of  ’bee characters‘ as well as some bee drawings using the Rotring Rapidograph. Here I’m using a dip pen to draw in detail the head of a bee.

Dip pen and Indian Ink:

Above: The drawing is from a photograph of a leafcutter bee emerging from the nest, which I took I think in 2009. The nib I’m using is the Gillot 404 which I used for the ‘bee characters’. I was surprised to find that used carefully and slowly I can achieve quite a lot of detail, as you can see if you click on the thumbnail images above. The ink is again the Windsor and Newton Liquid Indian Ink, which is non-waterproof. I have found it is ideal for this work. I use a very small amount of ink on the nib each time, dipping a very little way into the ink, or applying with a small paint brush. This way I have found there have been (so far!) no disasters with blobs of ink, and it flows almost like using a pencil, if the nib is used gently and relatively slowly. Every so often, once the ink starts to dry on the nib, I rinse the nib in a small cup of water and dry it on a lint-free cloth. Paper is Bristol Board.

This is the technique I’ll be using for a while now on the bees. Despite being quite slow work, it is in fact much quicker than drawing with the Rapidograph. It also allows me to make a variety of marks including stippling, and the lines also have more variety of thickness.

Above, left: Some quick sketches of a newly-emerged leafcutter. Above, centre and right: close-up views of a larger study of a leafcutter bee, showing the variety of lines used.

Above: Gillott nib looking slightly worn – I just hope that when I start using the next one it gives me the same results, or I’m going to be very disappointed!

The close-up of the nib above was taken with my new compact camera, which I’m hoping to use to take some better photographs of the bees. I have been struggling with the older photographs of the bees I’ve taken, since they don’t have the detail that I want to record in these drawings. At the moment I’m enjoying the weather, chasing insects around the garden and getting used to the camera. I have been really pleased to find miner bees digging in my garden for the first time this year. I don’t know whether I’ve missed them before, or they’re here for the first time.

I’ll post a few of the new pictures in the photography part of the site soon. For now, there is a link below to take you to some of my earlier photographs, and information on the solitary bees.

| Bee Pages with photographs and illustrations |

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Something of a different take on the bees, and probably as far removed from the Rapidograph drawings as I can get.

A label:

Above: Back in February I did a couple of quick sketches of bees on labels and cards for a gift. It was just a little sketching, using the same nib I used to address the envelope. But I realised that these bees had all the character I was looking for in my more serious drawing, and I think this is where the idea for the bee characters originated.

Bee characters – a few early drawings:

Taking notes one day from one of Fabre’s bee books, my mind was wandering with regard to what the bees might think of our notions about them, and I found myself doodling these bees on the page. 

Above left: First doodles with gel pen in my notebook. Above, centre left: Work on the bees using the nibs I’d been using to practise my writing, and Indian Ink. After a little experimentation I found that the Gillott 404 nib with Windsor & Newton liquid indian ink were ideal for these tiny sketches, as you can see from my note on the page. This ink is less ‘sticky’ than the Indian Ink I’ve always used before, and I’ll write more about that in my next blog post on the bee drawings. Above right: Two shots of a couple of the early characters – the one with the pen gives an idea of scale. I added some ink wash, as you can see. 

Above: Combining some of my lettering with the bees. This combination of lettering and small drawings is one I’ve been using on my family trees. Since these first efforts I’ve drawn many more ‘characters’ engaged in photography, writing their own books, looking through telescopes and what not. Not sure where it’s all going, but it’s fun playing about with them!

My next post on the bee drawings should be up next week, and looks at my most recent drawings using the dip pens – a return to more ‘serious’ bee studies.

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I’ve been meaning to update the blog for some time, to show the drawings I’ve been doing of bees. I hadn’t felt there was much to write about, but looking back over the material, I realise I should have updated everything a lot sooner. Since there seems to be too much material for one blog post, I’ve split it into three. Here’s the first – about the bees in Rotring Rapidograph.

Those of you who follow the blog will know that I encourage solitary bees to the garden and am always photographing and writing about them. I have an idea to write a book about the Leafcutter bees in particular, which would be either an ‘Artists Book’ with most of the focus on the drawings, or else more philosophically-based, with the drawings serving more as illustrations. 

I also have a lot of straightforward information about solitary bees which I will probably put on the website in some form or another. I’ve put a link to all the bee information on the website at the moment - blog posts, web pages, photographs and drawings – on the menu at the right, or you can go straight to it here: Bee Pages.

Rapidograph Bees

Dining Room Chair – detail of the Ivy:

Above: A detail from the drawing Dining Room Window and Chair showing the view through the lower part of the window – an ivy, which is always covered in honey bees during its flowering season. This was one of the first times I had included bees in my work, though I am often photographing and writing about them. I decided to use the photographs as the basis of some drawings which would focus on the bees themselves.

A Leafcutter bee using Rotring Rapidograph:

Above: This first study was a straightforward drawing using the Rotring Rapidograph, mainly stippling but also using fine lines for the hairs. As you can see above left, I had begun by making a sketch of this bee in pencil. For the ink drawing I began by drawing the outline of the bee and flower in pencil. But the more I worked on the bee, the more I felt it was too ‘stationary’ and not at all what I wanted from a study of so lively a creature!

I also had the difficulty of rendering the flower petals; so easy in pencil, but too time-consuming for the number of drawings I’ll need for the book. I decided to experiment with some looser sketches in Rapidograph pen, leaving aside the preliminary pencil drawing, and being freer with the marks used:

Rapidograph sketch of a newly-hatched Leafcutter bee:

Above: Sketches of a bee in Rapidograph (0.13). Of course abandoning the preliminary drawing meant there would be plenty of mistakes. But I think this was good for me, since I’m so used to meticulously drawing everything out in pencil before I begin. It also helped with my beginning to understand the anatomy of the bee. I think this bee comes alive and off the page in a way that the earlier bee did not.

Once I’d sketched the bee in ink, I used a combination of stippling, dashes and other small marks for the details. I think I went on to fiddle about using a little ink wash, and some dried India ink on cotton buds. This wasn’t particularly successful in terms of a beautiful image, but I think the experiment worked in that it moved me away from so much reliance on the time-consuming stippling.

Adding ink wash:

Above: And finally for this post, a page from my tentative experiments with ink wash on the petals. The bees themselves were mainly drawn with the Rapidograph. I say ‘wash’ but I’m still trying to control everything too much, and I need a lot more practice. I really had to push myself to try out all these different ideas after being wedded to the stippling for so long! I’m still somewhat uneasy sharing my ‘mistakes’ and experiments, as all I can see are problems that still need work.

After a while I decided that the Rapidograph wasn’t giving me the lines I wanted, and neither did it blend well with either the wash, or in combination with pencil leaves and petals. Something else was needed, and so I put down my Rapidographs for the time being.

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Dining Room Window and Chair, 2010

At least, more or less complete. There are still a few small, dark clouds I will add lower down near the chair at some point. But I thought I’d post the drawing as it is now, since a few people have asked me about it. It took months to complete, not only because of the amount of detail, but because I unfortunately suffered from a frozen shoulder, migraines and other illness during the process. It has been in a drawer for quite some time now (since my last update!), and only now am I able to look at a scan of it and think, yes, I’m almost happy with this.

This was by no means my first stipple drawing, but nevertheless I learnt quite a lot along the way, especially in the use of patterns in the stippling, which I found very effective in the skies. I will write more about the drawing at a later date, when I have a little more perspective. In the meantime, here’s a recap on the progress of the drawing in my blog.

A larger image of the drawing in full can be seen here: Dining Room Window and Chair.

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A little update following on from Monday’s post about the bee activity in the garden.

As the weather has continued mostly dry and warm, and getting drier and warmer, there has been more bee activity in the bamboo, with a number of solitary bees flying and mating. I have also been able to identify the types of bee, with some careful study, and a little helpful confirmation from Damian at Help Save Bees.

Some of the solitary bees currenty active in the garden:

Above: The two pictures on the left are of a female Tawny mining bee, and I think this is the same female who was here at the weekend. Haven’t seen a male so far. The more common of the solitary bees at the moment here is shown in the two pictures on the right, which I captured this morning, resting on one of the roses. It is the Early mining bee.

This bee below is probably another mining bee, Andrena carantonica, which likes to nest under paths and stones, according to this useful website: Garden Safari.

Update: I think it is more likely to be Andrena cineraria, or Ashy mining bee, see this: Information sheet. Some sites mention its bluish tinge, which certainly fits with what I saw. Unfortunately I haven’t seen this bee again.

I think all the solitary bees at the moment are types of mining bee, which make their nests underground. This is a bee I have not seen before in my garden, however this could simply be because I haven’t paid attention! However, I did quite a bit of clearing of some areas a few weekends ago, ready to plant some bee-friendly plants, and the resulting bare patches of earth may have attracted these bees. I can’t imagine I would have missed the tawny mining bee before, as she’s so very brightly coloured. I’m hoping that at least some of them nest in my garden this year. The soil is quite sandy, which I have read that they prefer.

And here below are the Early mining bees mating, captured yesterday in quite windy conditions, so I was very lucky I happened not only to spot this pair, but that the leaves stopped thrashing around long enough to get them more or less in focus:

Above:
1. Female resting on leaf, seems to be depositing pollen from her feet to the leaf.
2. Pollen can be seen on the leaf, meanwhile the male is visible, hovering above.
3. The male, smaller and more slender than the female, lands on the leaf.
4. Male and female together.

Below:
5-7. Mating takes place (in 6, the male is balancing on his wing tips).
8. The scene from slightly further out.

And just a last couple of photos for today, below. I decided to see if I could see any nesting activity for the mining bees, and came across this hole in the soil (possibly one of my least exciting photos!), which is approximately the right size for a mining bee (the diameter of a pencil). However, I didn’t see any bee activity around it, and it could just be, well, a hole of no particular importance! While I was waiting for a bee to turn up, I spotted this wasp collecting nesting material from an old piece of wood.

Since there is such a lot of bee activity this year in the garden I’ve decided to invest in a proper macro lens for my SLR. All these pictures so far have been taken with my compact camera with it’s ‘macro’ setting on. So, hopefully I’ll be getting some better quality shots on here soon.

Update 8th April: This Hairy footed flower bee, below, another solitary bee, on the white dead nettle this afternoon. This bee looks like a black bumblebee, but it darts around very quickly rather than ‘bumbling’. It could see me with the camera and was hiding quite a bit, but managed to get some rather blurred pics. I’ll try to capture it again with the new lens.

Update 12th April: Below: This male Hairy footed flower bee was in the garden today. They move very quickly, and of all the bees I have seen they are the most interested in me, often ‘buzzing’ the camera or my head while I’m trying to take a photo! This one below, was enjoying a quiet moment on an old plastic pot. Below right: you can see his cheeky-looking face, and enormous eyes.

Update 20th April: Below: I’m still not certain whether the hole in the ground had any significance, but since then I have discovered what are definitely the nests of mining bees. A couple are alongside the path (below left), while the majority are in the soil at the edge of some woodruff. I noticed one entrance two days ago, then another couple appeared the next day, and today there are about seven. I think there are at least three bees at work, but there could be more. Unfortunately they seem very sensitive to my crashing around, however quiet I try to be, and so far all I have are photographs of the bees in the entrance to the nests: below centre and right.

I will keep photographing the bees, since I want plenty of material for the bee drawings I’m working on.

All updates to the bee activity will now go in a future blog post, and extra photographs will be on my Bee Photography page.

Also – see the Bee Pages on the right hand menu!

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