Leaf cutter bees

[quimcunx]

I'd go more with brown than black.

According to wiki they get to 3cm. This was bigger. Or seemed so. The size of a small bird, I'd say, you know a chaffinch or perhaps a sparrow. About the size of a hamster. Maybe a small cat.

 

[quimcunx]

It didn't seem very pointy at all. It was rounded and chunky, like a thumb.


Except it was the size of a small cat.

 

[Pip]

Are you sure it wasn't a bird?

 

[strung out]

or a rat

 

[quimcunx]

Nah. It was about thumb size and it had that transformer carapace/wings thing going on.

I asked the guy who had to walk round it if he knew what it was and he just said beetle.

 

[quimcunx]

or a rat

Possibly, a big rat or a small cat.

 

[Riklet]

That just means bumblebee. Same as knapweed, cornflowers and anything vaguely blue and raggedy is 'bluet'. They've got far less words for flora and fauna in general.

Grrrr I was misled then! Damn you unimaginative frenchies!

These are the black bee critters I was on about. Mmm shiny...

Still not solved the mystery of the dozy/stoned bumble bees rolling about all over the grass yesterday. Maybe they dropped their leaves...

 

[sheothebudworths]

GUESS WHAT, PIP?!? I just saw a leaf cutter bee cutting it's nice, neat circles out of my blueberry leaves!

Blimey they work quickly, eh?!

I would've had no idea what was going on if I hadn't read this thread! But I had, so I said 'OH! I know what you are AND what you're up to! I MUST tell Pip!'

On closer inspection it seems to have cut quite a lot of them already ((((( plant )))))...

 

[Biddlybee]

how did I miss this thread?! I want to see one

 

[smmudge]

It gets better.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/gloucestershire/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8206000/8206853.stm

Nice rolling technique. Busy bees gotta relax somehow.

 

[Cid]

How the fuck have you managed to get loads of great bugs on your little balcony Pip?

Green fingered i suppose... wonder who you get that from?

 

[ddraig]

Leaf Cutter Ants on BBC4 now, a colony in tubes etc
thought of you Jock McGrim, raises a glass

 

[Cid]

I'd forgotten the struggle of the lone ant... <also raises glass>

 

[Mrs Magpie]

*rushes to get glass and suitable something to fill it for the purposes of glass raising to the much-loved, much-missed Jock McG*

 

[ddraig]

that thread is 10 years old next week!

 

[platinumsage]

Saw a patchwork leafcutter bee today. It has taken up residence in the gap around the plant pot that my cactus was in, which died last winter. Luckily I couldn't be bothered to deal with the pot yet.