| Christine | Farmer |

An update on what the leaf-cutter bees are doing at the moment. Some bees are still hatching. The clicking sound of the bees nibbling away at the dried leaf cells is very audible if you’re sitting anywhere near the tubes, so it’s easy to know when they are working their way out! Here is a previous post showing leaf-cutter bees hatching, and here you can see that they are now hatching from the wooden bee house:

I feel I must say that although this bee house above looks beautiful, as you can see the bees have not favoured it, and prefer the cylinder-type houses. The reason for this seems to be that many of the holes are simply the wrong size or shape. One bee last year attempted to nest in one of the lower holes, and gave up the attempt (see above, right). The two circular holes either side of the ones which have been nested in cannot be used at all, because there are small nails blocking the tubes. So if you are purchasing bee homes, please look out for all these things before making a selection.

Meanwhile, bees that have been about for a week or so are looking for suitable nest sites. So if you have put up some bee houses (which you can order from e.g. here or here) recently, or have nests from last year, this is the kind of thing to look out for. On the left, the bee is exploring the new tubes, centre picture she seems to have chosen to re-use one of the old tubes, and emerges with white paper, which is thrown below as debris (far right):

Finally for now, one of the bees resting after emerging, and enjoying some of the garden flowers (see more plants to attract bees here):

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

| Solitary Bee Pages |

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |

Why attract leaf-cutter bees?

Leaf-cutter bees are incredible creatures to encourage into your garden or allotment – great to observe and look after, and they are wonderful pollinators. This kind of bee is a ‘solitary bee‘ which does not form a hive or make honey, but works alone, although they will nest side-by-side and not fight or compete. They are in fact perfect bees for the garden, and safe around children as they do not store honey and so have nothing to ‘defend’ from attack. They are quite happy to let you go right up to the nest to see what they’re doing, as you can see from these shots of a bee hatching in my garden this week (click for a closer view):

What do the bees do in the tubes..?

The tubes are just the right size to allow the bees to easily construct their nest cells, which they make from circles of leaves. The bees fly out into your garden, cut perfect circles from your rose bush leaves (see also photo below, third from left), and fly back to the nest. You can follow them around your garden as they do this! Once back at the nest, the bee will curl up the circle of leaf, and take it into the tube with her. A bee will need many leaf circles to make each cell, since she lines the sides of the tube as well as sealing both ends of each cell with many layers of leaves. Before she seals each cell, she lays one egg, and puts food of pollen ‘bee bread’ to enable the hatched larvae to eat and grow during the time the cell is sealed. All of these activities can be observed by watching the tubes during the summer. Also fun to watch are the females bees clearing out old tubes at the beginning of the season; kicking out old leaf-debris in previously-used tubes, or removing the paper inserts from newer tubes (see photo below, second from left). These bees prefer to re-use an old tube rather than re-line a completely new one with leaves, and will ignore new tubes if there are any empty, weather-beaten tubes to re-colonise!

The life-cycle of leaf-cutter bees, in brief: The young bees emerge from their nests in June, and mate. After this the males die, and the females begin the work of nesting and laying eggs. Once sealed into the cells the eggs hatch, and the larvae feed on the ‘bee bread’, grow, pupate and develop into the bees which then hatch almost a year after they were laid as eggs. These newly-hatched bees mate, lay their eggs, and die before the summer is over, never seeing their off-spring.

How can I start encouraging solitary bees into my garden?

Where to buy the nests: The Oxford Bee Company who originally sold the cylinders and tubes is no longer trading, but cylinders and tubes can be purchased from various places online, for example WigglyWigglers and CJ Wildbird Foods. Or search online for ‘Oxford Bee Company’ for other suppliers. You can also make nests yourself out of old garden canes and similar stems, or by drilling holes in a block of wood, and these are successful. But I have found that the bees can be a little fussy about the diameter of hole they prefer, and many of the tubes may go unused if they are too big or too small – however these may be used by other bees or insects. I have had mason bees (which make their cells out of mud) nesting alongside the leaf-cutters in my nests.

Siting: The first year I tried the cylinders I attached them to a sunny wooden fence, but while there was some interest from bees that summer, none of them nested. I have since found that the bees do not particularly like the tubes when they are new, and prefer them to be somewhat weathered. However, I have also heard that the vibrations caused by the fence moving in the wind may also have discouraged them from settling. So I have followed advice to place the cylinders in a stable and sunny spot, a few feet from the ground, and preferably somewhere the tubes won’t get wet.

Plants to grow: There is a very useful site here which lists the kinds of plants that bees love. Obviously, leaf-cutters also like roses from which to harvest nest material, but they will use other similar plants and of course fly around the neighbourhood in order to locate suitable leaves! And equally obviously don’t use chemical sprays in the garden, as these are poisonous to bees; consider gardening Organically with wildlife controls, barriers, etc., it really is the only way if you want to encourage any kind of wildlife.

Over winter: Once the summer is over and the tubes are all sealed, you will need to put the cylinders somewhere dry and cool for the bees to over-winter. A garden shed seems ideal, but don’t forget to take them out again next Spring! Once Spring comes, re-position your cylinders where they were the previous year, and wait for the new bees to hatch. My leaf-cutters begin to hatch in the first weeks of June, towards Midsummer.

Lastly: Don’t be discouraged if no bees nest in the first year. It may well take a little while for them to find the nests and settle in. Also, you will find that if you stop spraying chemicals in your garden, and plant more of the bee-friendly plants, you will see a definite increase in bees and other interesting wildlife in your garden anyway!

Also, check out these articles on solitary bees, the best plants to grow for bees, and the Co-Op site on saving bees.

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

| Solitary Bee Pages |

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |

I recently visited the ‘Tale-Pieces’ exhibition of the work of the self-taught wood engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. ‘Tale-piece’ was Bewick’s amusing name for the extremely small engravings (just an inch or so in size) which he used to finish off chapters of his books on Natural History.

The magnifying glasses handed out as one enters the gallery really are necessary, as it is astonishing the amount of detail which Bewick captured in these tiny vignettes. The works, displayed two to a framed page, mostly depict scenes from country life, including fishing and more domestic activities, which bring to mind folk-songs and ballads. But there is also something darker yet simultaneously whimsical in the images of trapping, flooding, graveyards, and crumbling ruins with their portentous Latin inscriptions.

What amazed and amused me most was the almost surreal nature of some of the imagery: a couple on a galloping horse encountering a gargantuan leaf was perhaps the most arresting, along with a monkey staring into a shaving mirror. But the one engraving I’d been really looking forward to was the one in which Bewick had carved a reproduction of his own thumb-print as the main part of the design, and it did not disappoint. Prepared to go hunting for the hidden fingerprint with my trusty magnifying glass I was delighted as it appeared, large as you like, taking up almost the entirety of one of the smaller pieces.

Needless to say with my love of the surreal and the miniature, to say nothing of Natural History and engraving, I’ll no doubt be returning to the subject of Thomas Bewick at a later date. Meanwhile, you might like to visit the webpages of the Bewick Society, and their blog, Tale-Pieces. And I highly recommend a trip to the exhibition to see these engravings for yourself if at all possible.

Thomas Bewick ‘Tale-Pieces’ continues at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham until the 25th May, after which it can be seen at The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |