Leaf cutting bees handiwork

There must be some leaf cutting bee Megachilidae nests near by, judging from all of the circular cutouts in these leaves. You can see large and small circular cutouts along the edges of some of the leaves.

It's always a great, healthy sign to see this occurring in the garden, because it means the leaf cutting bees are busy.

The leaf cutting females are solitary and construct nests in tubular cavities such as hollow stems and burrows in the ground. They neatly cut circular pieces from leaves, sometimes petals, for nest building. Circular pieces form cups for their brood cells, while longer pieces are used to build the sides.

In an earlier post, I posted this photo of a female leaf cutting bee carrying an oblong piece she cut out of a leaf.

She happened to be resting on top of a juniper hedge along our front yard when I took this photo.

You can see that the piece is longer than the bee's body!