Last evening I was sitting outside enjoying a cold beer after work and noticed a bee flying around the toilet overflow pipe that sticks out of the back wall of the house. The pipe is about 20mm in diameter.
The next time I saw the bee it flew out of the pipe. Now I have only had half a glass of Stella so I wasn't imagining things. Over the next 10 minutes the bee or bees were constantly back and forth in and out of the pipe.
Then it dawned on me that we may have a beehive in the karsey (sp). I went upstairs to the bathroom and listened carefully to the cistern for any buzzing noises. I decided I couldn't hear anything so I lifted the top off carefully.
No bees or any sign that they may have been in there. Just to check that the overflow pipe wasn't blocked I poured some water down there, at first it just trickled away, then I could hear it pouring out and splashing on the ground outside.
When I went outside to see if anything had come out of the pipe I saw a collection of small leaves and a green tube looking thing.
This is some of what came out of the pipe.
And a closeup picture of the orange thing
The small pieces of leaf are about the size of a thumb nail and there were dozens of them. The whole thing would of been about 4-5" long before it fell out of the pipe and constructed out of cut pieces of leaf.
For a laugh I googled leaf cutting bee, never believing anything would come up. We have all heard of leaf cutting ants and seen the films of them carrying the leaves back to the nest, but bees. Well pages of stuff came up in the search, link at the bottom to one of the pages.
So we have leaf cutting bees in the UK. The tapered looking thing in the top photo holds the individual cells which you can see at the right in the photo. The cell is about 20mm long by about 8mm round and perfectly formed. Inside this is a store of food for the grub, the orange stuff. After reading more about these solitary bees I have looked around the garden and found the bush where the pieces of leaf have come from.
Now I am feeling guilty that I have destroyed the nest, so I have put a couple of cells out of harms way in a hope that they will hatch. Then I read that they will remain in the cells and develope, to emerge the next season.
That amounts to a blocked overflow pipe for almost a year.
The moral of this story is beware of bees up your overflow pipe.
No photo of the bee unfortunately.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05576.html
Mick.
The next time I saw the bee it flew out of the pipe. Now I have only had half a glass of Stella so I wasn't imagining things. Over the next 10 minutes the bee or bees were constantly back and forth in and out of the pipe.
Then it dawned on me that we may have a beehive in the karsey (sp). I went upstairs to the bathroom and listened carefully to the cistern for any buzzing noises. I decided I couldn't hear anything so I lifted the top off carefully.
No bees or any sign that they may have been in there. Just to check that the overflow pipe wasn't blocked I poured some water down there, at first it just trickled away, then I could hear it pouring out and splashing on the ground outside.
When I went outside to see if anything had come out of the pipe I saw a collection of small leaves and a green tube looking thing.
This is some of what came out of the pipe.
And a closeup picture of the orange thing
The small pieces of leaf are about the size of a thumb nail and there were dozens of them. The whole thing would of been about 4-5" long before it fell out of the pipe and constructed out of cut pieces of leaf.
For a laugh I googled leaf cutting bee, never believing anything would come up. We have all heard of leaf cutting ants and seen the films of them carrying the leaves back to the nest, but bees. Well pages of stuff came up in the search, link at the bottom to one of the pages.
So we have leaf cutting bees in the UK. The tapered looking thing in the top photo holds the individual cells which you can see at the right in the photo. The cell is about 20mm long by about 8mm round and perfectly formed. Inside this is a store of food for the grub, the orange stuff. After reading more about these solitary bees I have looked around the garden and found the bush where the pieces of leaf have come from.
Now I am feeling guilty that I have destroyed the nest, so I have put a couple of cells out of harms way in a hope that they will hatch. Then I read that they will remain in the cells and develope, to emerge the next season.
That amounts to a blocked overflow pipe for almost a year.
The moral of this story is beware of bees up your overflow pipe.
No photo of the bee unfortunately.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05576.html
Mick.
