Tuesday 25 April 2017

Bug hotel in action

This sunny weather has caused a lot of activity in and around a bug hotel, made at DigIn about 2 years ago.
Its mounted on my garden shed in full sun and has been used as a nest by leaf cutter bees and mason bees.  Its easy to spot the difference between the two species; the leaf cutters use parts of leaves to seal their nesting tubes and the mason bees use mud.
The tubes have been sealed all winter and the new bees are now emerging.
See the picture and short video for some action!
You can see the tiny holes in the mud where the new bee has pushed its way out.  On the roof of the lower bug box you can see bits of mud that have fallen from the upper bug box as the new bees emerge.


Heres a short video clip... if you have trouble viewing it on Apple Mac, enable Flash for this site on your computer or use the Google Chrome browser which gives an option to use Flash on the page which has the video.