Leaf Cutter Bees are generally found in the Western half of the United States. However they have been found as far east as West Virginia. As most of you probably know leaf cutter bees construct their nests out of clippings of leaves that they cut off of plants. They are an important part of the ecosystem however there habits of chewing off parts of leaves makes them a nightmare for anyone constructing gardens in a vicinity close to a leaf cutter bee nest. Therefore in order to combat this problem the best thing to do for a plant grower is to locate the leaf cutter bee nest and take it out. However in order to do this you must first be able to locate it.
From the picture above you can see what a leaf cutter bee nest approximately looks like. As you can see the actual nest is actually quite small which makes them very difficult to locate. If you add that with the fact that they are made out of the same material that they usually are built in makes them extremely hard to locate if you do not know exactly what you are looking for. However there are a few methods that can help you out when locating a leaf cutter bee nest.
The first thing you should look for is high bee traffic. If you routinely notice a lot of bees in an area this is a good indication that a leaf cutter bee nest is close by and you should spend a little extra time in this area attempting to locate it. However this may not always work because unlike other bees leaf cutter bees are solitary bees. Which makes them distinctly different from the bees that build huge colonies filled with thousands of bees; which is what their honey bee cousins do.
However what many people do find is that if there is one leaf cutter bee in an area there are usually other leaf cutter bee nests located close by. If you often see leaf cutter bees flying around your home you may also what to check the siding of your home. These types of bees have been known to chew threw weak siding made up of different types of woods in order to find a good locating to install their nesting structure. Therefore it is very important that you locate these bee nests before they do to much damage to your property. These are a couple ways to locate a leaf cutter bee nest, all of which surrounds around your ability to locate and identify the leaf cutter bee nest.
If you fail to take out the nest early enough you may find that certain plants in your yard start to be heavily damaged especially if there are multiple bees chewing at it daily. The bees will begin by taking small chunks out of the leaves. At first this isnt much of a problem because they dont take enough of the tissue out of the leaves to be of any problem. However after time this can add up and eventually the entire plant can die or fall subject to some sort of disease which will be easier to catch with parts of the leaves missing. So good luck on your hung of leaf cutter bees. However before you go about attempting to eliminate the bees read about leaf cutter bees benefits so you know exactly what kind of damage you could be doing by eliminating leaf cutter bees from around your property.