native bee...being native

unlike the past forty-one summers or so i have had time on my hands this year...not entirely voluntarily...time none the less...and that time has been a slow release from sightlessness about the rhythms and cycles in the microcosm in my yard...i have been releasing alfalfa leaf cutter bees into the suburban wilds around my house for a number of years now...the nesting tubes and blocks and the bee houses are not prohibitive...the cocoons run about fifty cents apiece so purchasing a hundred or so a year isn't going to break the bank and the return is they reproduce as the bees find nest sites...both in the houses and in whatever wild areas come to hand ( there are old nurse logs with multiple holes out back and i suspect there are nest sites there...among other places )...over the seasons i have taken hundreds of photographs of "the girls" as they busily gather pollen from the stands of alfalfa i have planted...and from other sources...to nourish the larvae they place in the leaf cocoons in the nesting tubes...what i have not done until very recently is discover them actually cutting leaves for those cocoons...that has taken until this past week...i have discovered a couple of stands of plants they are swarming in the evenings to cut leaves...

there has always been evidence of leaf cutting out there...some done for sustenance by some insects...and some for cocoons...

in the past four days i have found a multiplicity of leaf cutter bees congregating in these stands in early evening...around five p.m. working on getting cocoon together...

the size of the leaf seems immaterial...what the are cutting are leaves that are almost succulent without many veins...maple leaves would be excluded...the vein hypothesis will remain as such until i dig a bit deeper into bee behavior...they are small however and their mandibles probably have limitations in terms of cutting...

i am told by wiser heads that they also utilize rose leaves...we have rose bushes, however i have not caught any there just yes...this may be because the bushes are in a well traveled area of the yard ( end of the driveway ) and these bees are solitary and very shy critters...easily spooked ( especially by moving shadows...if you want to observe keep them between you and the sun...the summer has been an education in many ways so far...there is more going on besides bee behaviors...for some reason i am finding the bees much more interesting...i wonder what could be the cause of that...