" Long time coming .... "

One of my garden wildlife highlights this year has been the discovery that my long forgotten  ' Bee Hotel/houses'  has finally got some occupants, its been nearly two years since I placed these in the garden after noticing the tell tale semi-circular cut outs on my Rose leafs.

I have heard it said that these little insect house's are not very successful, but mine has certainly found favour with the local leaf cutters this year.

These are the the two insect houses , as you can see some of the cells have been capped off with leaf sections.

I have obviously found a position to their liking.

The next stage was to find out what species of leaf cutter was using the boxes.

Finally caught sight of a bee entering the box, closely followed by more Bee's entering the cells .
As I patiently waited close by I soon noticed the Bee's coming in with some leaf sections.

I just needed a photograph now and an identification.





Finally got some good views as they flew into the house, they do not hang around and soon disappear into the cells.

These turned out to be one of the commonest garden leaf cutters,  commonly known as the patchwork leaf-cutter or (Megachile centuncularis).

Common or not I was really pleased that the Bee's were finally using the insect house, in the end eight cells out of twenty four have been used in one house, and three in the other.

 Patchwork leaf-cutter (Megachile centuncularis).

These Leaf cutter Bee's have a yellow pollen brush under there abdomen which can be clearly seen in some of these images.

I tried to get a photograph as they flew in towards the house, but they come in quite fast and hard to get a focus on them. this is the closest I got.

Quite fascinating to watch as they seal the exterior of the cell, will be interesting to take a look later at the completed cells, later in the winter.

Update - I have noticed a couple of the cell caps have been removed, probably by the local Tits looking for a meal.

 I read that sometimes the Leafcutter Bees leave these last cells empty to combat the birds attentions.

The moral here is not to give up on your Bee houses, just find that perfect location.