Leafcutter bee on blanket flower
Megachile sp.
Leafcutter bee · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 12 July 2026
A leafcutter bee working the dark red disc of a blanket flower in the July border, a garden Gaillardia bred for exactly this two-tone look. Leafcutters are solitary bees of gardens and meadows across the continent, nesting in hollow stems and old beetle holes.
They carry pollen on a dense brush of hairs under the abdomen rather than in the leg baskets honeybees use, and get their name from the females' habit of snipping neat, round pieces out of leaves to line their nest cells. A rose with tidy half-moons cut from its leaves has had a leafcutter.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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