Harvesting Two Habitats At Site1a2h - 9 August 2020

Previously we placed leaf cutter bee cocoons at our Gilbert residential site. On May 30th we observed a cloud of bees. They had finally emerged 22 days after we placed them at Site1a2h.

We have continued to monitor the progress by counting the number of filled tubes (nests) in the three habitats we provided. Here is the count as of 22 July 2020:

Leaf Cutter Results as of 22 July 2020

We have had discussions with leaf cutter experts such as Dr. Steve Peterson, Elisabeth Wilson and most recently Wayne Mennie of JWM Leafcutters Inc. These bees/cocoons were purchased from JWM Leafcutters Inc and have proven to be high quality. We will report further on our conversation with Wayne in a future post.

Based on our discussions we decided to harvest two of the three leaf cutter habitats at the Gilbert Site1a2h. The rationale for harvesting these two sites is research what results we have obtained. These are the two smaller, wood block construction habitats. We will retain the large 'foam' construction habitat (purchased from JWM Leafcutters Inc) in place on the recommendation of both Steve and Wayne.

First we opened and harvested habitat Site1a2h-3. This habitat has tubes sized for blue orchard bees that prefer larger diameters.

Site1a2h 3 Habitat on 22 July 2020

Note that there were only five tubes filled (lower left corner). Four appeared to be blue orchard bees evidence by the mud construction. The remaining one (absolute lower, left) was leaf construction. We were also anticipating that we would find "other" activity in the tubes that was not apparent from an external observation.

We discovered a number of leaf cutter cocoons and a few dead bees. We also found two yellow larvae. We're not sure what they are. Perhaps Carpet beetle larvae as shown on page 60 of 'How to Manage the Blue Orchard Bee' and below:

carpet beetle larvae with shed skin - ISU Plant and Insect Diagnostic Clinic

Next we harvested the second habitat (Site1a2h-2) has the smaller diameter tubes that leaf cutters prefer. It was colocated with the large JWM Leafcutters Inc habitat and the cocoons.

Site1a2h - 2 Habitat With Second Generation Emergences Highlighted

Note that it is almost completely filled, mostly with leaf cutter activity (green leaves,violet/pink bougainvillea flower leaves, one yellow bougainvillea flower leave and several 'mud' plugs typical of blue orchard bees.

We found many, many leaf cutter cocoons, about a quart. This is from the 8 by 13 habitat totaling about 100 available nests. Our last count showed 67 of the available tubes filled.