Staying with the Bee theme it seems that I have inadvertently created a small native bee habitat in the front garden. A couple of days ago I noticed a couple of native bees in our front glass porch. This porch tends to trap insects, and I am constantly rescuing praying mantis, other small critters including a migratory Meadow Argus butterfly from Australia.
Yesterday after finding a dead native bee, I began wondering where they were coming from and remembering finding bee habitats that I had photographed in Northland wondered if the clay bank in our front garden could have attracted them.
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| Native bee - Northland beach |
This is a small patch of clay and scoria that some time back I had tucked under the front hedge following digging a small garden drainage ditch. Months later I regretted this during trimming the hedge and realizing that like local building developments on sloping sites during heavy rain the sediment was sliding down the front bank. I set out to tidy this up. I couldn't clear it completely as the clay had dried solid like concrete as this bank gets long hours of sunshine...
Standing on the front berm (grass verge) I soon spotted a few black native bees entering crevasses in the clay. Apparently, their nests can be some 20cms deep where the females lay their egg. Later young emerging females do the same. Native bees feed on Pohutukawa, manuka and some non-native introduced species gathering pollen. They do not sting and generally their nests can be found within 100metres of their feeding areas. Although sometimes many bees can be attracted to the same nesting bank of clay or sand, they are not colony nesters with no hive or production of honey.