"Ah, the
leafcutter bee!" I carelessly remarked--you know I am very learned in Natural History (for instance, I can always tell kittens from chickens at one glance)--and I was passing on, when a sudden thought made me stoop down and examine the leaves.
Caption: This
leafcutter bee is nestled inside a human-made bee hotel.
For example, the Laurence Sanders image of a
leafcutter bee Megachile macularis carrying a piece of cut leaf, about to enter an underground burrow where a sizeable wolf spider is sitting at the entrance (p.
Alfalfa has a number of native pollinators, including wild bees from the Megachile and Bombus genera, and the well-known and widely studied
leafcutter bee and honeybee.
(The alfalfa crop's other pollinator, the alfalfa
leafcutter bee, is also free-living, though not native to the United States.)
Various species of
leafcutter bee have been found to be much better pollinators of alfalfa, blueberries, carrots, sunflowers and onions than honeybees.
But he and his colleagues are working on a second strategy to counteract such an incursion: the introduction of alternative pollinators such as the Canadian
leafcutter bee. This solitary bee is an efficient pollinator of lucerne and other crops.
bifarius) and other solitary bees [especially the Western
leafcutter bee (Megachile perihirta) and andrenids (Andrena salicifloris)].
A new
leafcutter bee species is named in honor of linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky.
JIM BRADY, intrigued by the activities of the
leafcutter bee, watched them trimming the leaves of garden lilies in Prescot, while further investigations at the National Wildflower Centre, Huyton, revealed they also have a liking for the leaves of seedling beeches there.
In the 1930s, Megachile rotundata (Fabricius) (later on called the "alfalfa
leafcutter bee") accidentally came to North America.
"We're thrilled to see that there's already an abundance of wildlife in the garden, with evidence of
leafcutter bees making the most of the garden and birds nesting too.