Do bees sunbathe ?

[Scunny Zeb]

I think these are honey bees...



Not a very good photo for identification purposes but I only had the phone camera with me so this was as close as I wanted to be.

There were dozens of them and more arriving as I watched, but they weren't clustered together as in a swarm, they were all spread out about a hands width apart like this..



If I had a telephoto lens, I'd of got a better shot of the group but I only had the bottle to get near these 3 stragglers at the edge

[FB.]

They may well be leafcutter bees.
Leafcutters are solitary bees (although they gather together around suitable food sources for mating).
Leafcutters find small holes in trees/walls/fenceposts and line them with leaves (rose leaves are popular - look out for neat semi-circles cut out of the edges of rose leaves).
The bees then stuff the leaf-lined nest with pollen and seal the nest tube with more leaves. They like holes 3-6 inches deep and 1/4-1/3 inch wide. They will construct a line of several bee-sized nest chambers in a row inside the hole. The adults die during the early summer and the larva develop inside the nest and emerge the following spring.

Leafcutter and Mason bees are excellent pollinators and are relatively harmless. They will usually avoid confrontation and usually fly away if disturbed. If you were to really annoy one it might stab you with their egg-laying tube, rather than give a proper venomous sting (they are docile so I mean that you need to really annoy one to get stung!); the sting is mild compared to colony-bees or wasps that need the sting to defend their colony.

[Two_Sheds]

I'm finding lots of solitary bee nests in my soil at the mo: neat little holes with very fine soil piled up outside

[FB.]

Yes, they'll be mining bees, which build a nest like the leafcutter/mason, but underground.

But people should take care with ground-based "bees" since many people are not good at telling the different types apart - and it is not unusual for wasps or bumblebees to build nests in disused animal nests. Now you really don't want to do anything to annoy bumble/honey bees or wasps.

[CaroltheCarrot]

I'm finding lots of solitary bee nests in my soil at the mo: neat little holes with very fine soil piled up outside

O i wondered what they were thank you

[Headfry]

Similar subject - almost, have you ever seen or more to the point heard a wasp ripping wood from a door or anything wood? what a noise from just a tiny insect - not keen on wasps (they steel my girls honey) but listening to them munching never fails to amaze me.
Mostly I can hear their rasping before I can see them!!!!

[Flummery]

We have solitary bees in the banks along the front gardens on our bit of the road. They do hang around a lot - I find them all over the door jambs and have to shoo them off to get in!

[SueA]

We get the leaf cutter bees in our garden, I watched one cutting neat little discs out of my roses & other plant leaves, if I hadn't seen it I'd have thought it was vine weevils or similar doing it!

[danmon_81]

if bees sunbathe do you think they only apply suncream to the yellow stripes???