We've discovered a new friend in the garden, a slightly reclusive yet diligent participant in taking care of our flowers. The females dig, the males dance and everyone pollinates - it's the miner bee ! Also known as a digger bee they are very different from honey bees and just as important.
Unlike honey bees they do not form long term colonies and don't have a queen therefore they are not at all aggressive and rarely sting. They also do not produce honey.
I have used other methods to attract solitary bees but none seems to work quite as well as having flowers and dirt.
The female bee digs a burrow to rear her own young. Their holes are approximately 1/4 inch in diameter and the burrow structure is often a vertical tunnel with smaller side tunnels ending at a single cell.
Unlike honey bees they do not form long term colonies and don't have a queen therefore they are not at all aggressive and rarely sting. They also do not produce honey.
I have used other methods to attract solitary bees but none seems to work quite as well as having flowers and dirt.
The female bee digs a burrow to rear her own young. Their holes are approximately 1/4 inch in diameter and the burrow structure is often a vertical tunnel with smaller side tunnels ending at a single cell.
The female stocks each cell with nectar and pollen she has collected (from our beautiful flowers) and then deposits her egg on the food mass.
nomina ludo
The benefits of the bees cannot be stressed enough. As we have pointed out they are great pollinators but they also aerate the soil and add an entertainment factor when you catch the male dancing outside the females burrow trying to get her to go out for a drink. There is also varieties of wasp that are diggers and ferocious cicada killers. Remember that in 2030 my East Coast friends.
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