TeddyGreenFingersSolitary bee
Osmia / Megachile · Abelha solitária
How to recognise it
Small dark or ginger bees going in and out of holes in wood, walls and bee hotels. Leafcutter bees leave neat semicircular cuts in rose and bean leaves.
Mistaken for
The tidy semicircular notches leafcutters take from rose leaves are blamed on caterpillars and sprayed. They are the calling card of one of the best pollinators you have.
What it eats
Not recorded — the field is blank rather than guessed.
How to attract it
A bee hotel of 6-10 mm holes in dry wood, facing morning sun and sheltered from rain. Bare patches of soil for ground-nesters. Continuous flowers.
Plants that help
Lifecycle
One generation a year for most species; females provision individual cells and never meet their offspring.
Months: March, April, May, June, July, August, September
The thing people get wrong
A single mason bee pollinates as much as a hundred honeybees on fruit blossom, because she carries dry pollen loosely on her belly and spills it everywhere she lands. If you have fruit trees, a bee hotel on a warm wall does more for your crop than a hive would.