Leafcutter Bee in Action

About a month ago, I was weeding around one of my blueberry bushes and noticed the work of a leafcutter bee on some of the lower leaves. These enterprising little native bees cut neat circles out of leaves to line the nests they create in old wood crevices or in the ground.

Besides blueberries, they seem to favour Epimediums and species roses. They are solitary bees, so without a community to spread the word about other good sources of material, they keep returning to the same source once they've found it. I don't begrudge them their harvest because they are good pollinators in the garden and the plants don't appear to suffer, except perhaps a little in appearance.

While I was there, the bee kept returning for another piece of leaf. I ran for my camera and had a stab at recording it at work. My video is a bit blurry, thanks to my lack of skill, but I'm posting it anyway, at least until I can get a better clip.Watch the top lefthand corner for the bee's appearance. (Note: I'm hearing that, if you get my blog via the RSS feed, the video doesn't load -advice on how to fix this gratefully accepted. However, it loads successfully straight from the site.)