Hello! While watching the eggplant flowers for pollinators in Turkana I noticed that some of the leaves of several nearby bell-pepper plants had neat circular pieces cut out from them…
I sat down to watch the plants, suspecting that the perpetrator would be back soon. A few minutes later an fervent buzzing zipped up to the plants and settled on one of the leaves. It was a leaf-cutter bee!
The bee works rapidly to cut through the leaf in a near-perfect circle…
Then the bee takes off for its nest with the piece of the leaf held under it. It will use this to line the walls of the tubular nest that it constructs for its larva. As these bees are also very good and efficient pollinators, they are welcome to use some of the crops’ leaves for their nests.
More from the world of bugs soon. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments!
Keyholes seem to be a favourite place for my leaf cutter bees to build their nests in my house in Naivasha!
Your photography continues to amaze me. A bee in flight carrying a piece of leaf? Kudos Dino! :>)
This is a great platform for dud lovers like me. I like the way this page is designed and would like to send some field photos too from Kakamega Forest area.
Caleb