Leafcutter bee

Megachile sp. · Bees & wasps

Leafcutter bee on blanket flower

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.

Bee dangling from a daylily stamen

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 12 July 2026

A leafcutter bee gripping a single arched daylily filament in the July border with its whole body hanging below it. Leafcutters are solitary bees of every garden across North America, and the daylilies are where they gather in July.

Daylily pollen is famously messy and sticky compared with most garden flowers, which is why it shows up so readily on a visiting insect's legs and face rather than staying on the anther. Each flower opens for one day only, which is the whole reason for the name, and a plant keeps going by opening a new one each morning.

Bee among daylily stamens

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 12 July 2026

A leafcutter bee hanging almost upside down off a curled daylily filament in the July border, wings half-open. Leafcutters are solitary bees of gardens and meadows across the continent, nesting in hollow stems and old beetle holes, and a daylily bed in July is full of them.

The black-and-orange banding narrows it to a leafcutter, one of the Megachile, which carry pollen on a brush of hairs under the abdomen rather than on the legs - so the belly is where to look for the load. Daylily anthers are enormous by garden standards, and a small bee working one comes away coated.