Last year we had the enjoyable spectacle of a leafcutter bee creating a nest
near to our back door.

This year I intend to encourage them by making a bee nest and hanging it on
the wall close to last year's site.

It'll be a fairly standard thing - a 7 or 8" block of wood with smooth
horizontal holes bored in it, and a sloping piece of wood on top to give
some shelter. However, I can't remember the size of holes to drill, nor the
optimum depth.

Anyone any suggestions?

(Last year I did have a couple of good links to sites with such data, but
have managed to lose them, and haven't turned up quite what I'm looking for
on google.)

Also, and quite importantly, am I too late to put this up? The links that I
have found so far suggest early spring, but this leafcutter appeared to be
getting it's material from one of the Hibiscus trees, and they're not in
leaf yet, so the bees surely can't have already started their nests.

thanks
Richard


--
Richard Sampson

email me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

"RichardS" noaccess@invalid wrote:

Last year we had the enjoyable spectacle of a leafcutter bee creating a nest
near to our back door.

This year I intend to encourage them by making a bee nest and hanging it on
the wall close to last year's site.

It'll be a fairly standard thing - a 7 or 8" block of wood with smooth
horizontal holes bored in it, and a sloping piece of wood on top to give
some shelter. However, I can't remember the size of holes to drill, nor the
optimum depth.

Anyone any suggestions?

I have two boughten ones from Schwegler, one of which is similar to your
proposal, but cast in woodcrete rather than drilled in wood. Not
specifically for leafcutter bees, but for any solitary bees and wasps.
Each provides holes ranging in size from 2mm to 9mm diameter, about 15mm
apart: the smallest holes are rarely used, but the 9mm are extremely
popular. One of the Schwegler ones allows you to view the development of
the bee larvae and assorted parasites (holes in a wooden panel lead to
plastic/glass tubes), which is fascinating, but despite great care to
avoid sunlight and extremely infrequent viewing a very high proportion
of nest attempts in the tubes fail and I'm a little worried that
conditions in these tubes are less than ideal.

I suggest you use seasoned native hardwood rather than a softwood, as I
suspect the terpenes in coniferous softwood wouldn't do the larvae any
good at all. I had a chunk of ancient birch lying around for this
purpose, but lost the necessary tuit.

I have been told that a couple of handfuls of short segments of old,
thickish garden cane tied into a tidy bundle (all bits of cane parallel
to one another, in case that wasn't clear :-) also provides a good home
for such things. Cane segments in the ones sold commercially seem to be
c. 4" long.


(Last year I did have a couple of good links to sites with such data, but
have managed to lose them, and haven't turned up quite what I'm looking for
on google.)

Also, and quite importantly, am I too late to put this up? The links that I
have found so far suggest early spring, but this leafcutter appeared to be
getting it's material from one of the Hibiscus trees, and they're not in
leaf yet, so the bees surely can't have already started their nests.

Put it up in any case, as something will use it. YOu could also try
drilling an assortment of largish (5-10mm) holes c. rawlplug depth into
loose bricks, then stacking these to form an imitation wall in a sunny
location. That should be roughly similar to the various holes in the
front of our house, which are immensely popular with _Anthophora_ and
other solitary bees/wasps.


regards
sarah

--
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view,
is silence about truth." Aldous Huxley