Curiosities: Leafcutter Bees

On the wisdom of solitary bees

Good morning from Michigan! Before I get to the really fun stuff, I just wanted to remind you there are a few paper copies left of my book of poetry. I’m not sure when they’ll be in stock again, so if you’re hoping to get one, now’s the time! And my e-book sale has been extended through the end of the week—compatible with e-readers, tablets, and desktops :) You can get that here for $3.99. Now let’s get to it!

On the Wisdom of Solitary Bees

Most mornings I wake before the rest of my family and read a book on my front porch. Sitting here, early in the day, I have seen so many of the comings and goings of our neighborhood wildlife. An affectionate curiosity has grown in me.

Do goldfinches travel in families? (Yes.) Do muskrats live alone? (No.) Do squirrels see in color? (Partially.) Is there a family of skunks living under our shed? (I hope not, and maybe.)

I’ve learned that European starlings were introduced to the United States by a man named Eugene Schieffelin, who, according to some accounts, wanted to introduce to North America all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. Blue jays mimic hawks and chase away cats. I’ve written all about robins.

This week, as I sat on my porch, I noticed what looked like a grayscale bee carrying pieces of leaf into a crack in our top step. She’d fly over, hovering with it between her feet, and she’d crawl into the chasm with it. Soon, she’d crawl back out unburdened and fly off, just to return a couple minutes later with another piece of foliage.

What on earth, I wondered, is that?

A leafcutter bee, it turns out. A gentle, solitary bee that makes nests of pieces of leaves and flower petals. I didn’t know solitary bees existed. But they do. And they are amazing.

A female leafcutter bee flits about the garden, using her small jaw to cut near-perfect circles out of leaves—in our case, mostly eastern redbud and tulip poplar. This does no harm to the plants. She takes only what she needs.

She weaves these materials into a thimble-shaped cell, packs that cell with a “loaf” made of pollen and nectar, and lays an egg there. She then seals off the room with more leaf-bit, and begins her work on another cell, starting right where the last one ended. In the end, she’ll have a narrow cylindrical nest made of about twenty cells, all perfectly constructed to feed and protect her soon-to-be bee babies.

As they construct their nests, leafcutter bees are very effective pollinators. More effective even than honey bees, due to the way they carry pollen (caked all over their underbelly rather than in tidy little baskets at their feet). One leafcutter bee can do the pollination work of twenty honeybees.

Soon the larvae hatch and eat and rest in their leaf rooms for quite a long time—they make themselves waterproof cocoons, and they will (at least in this part of the country) overwinter there. They will metamorphose. And in next year’s late spring or early summer, they will emerge to begin the cycle again.

I am filled with admiration for these innovative, surprising, life-giving creatures. And I can’t help but feel there’s a sort of wisdom (or at least, for me, an appeal) to their evolution, their cycles, their survival. These quiet bees, doing their work away from the busyness of a hive, tending to their eggs, building homes in the cleverest places, making use of everything. Taking only what they need from the earth and repaying it tenfold.

I suppose I aspire to the same, though I doubt I’ll ever be a fraction as effective, and I know I’ll never be as single-minded.

I’ve recently taken an indefinite hiatus from social media, and with the quiet that’s come in moving away from the honeybee buzzing, the sweetness and the sting, has come a question: What now? I am still learning how to balance—how to honor my needs with the needs of the world. How to… and this feels so trite to say at times… but, in the middle of all the noise and demands and wrongness around, how to find my peace and live there, somehow. How to find my own way to a good life—one that is mine, that is kind, that is fruitful.

As I tend to my garden now, I keep this in mind, and prepare: come spring, twenty fuzzy, lonesome, silver bees will crawl out from that horrible crack in our stoop, and they will make our flowers bloom.

Isn’t that something?