Leafcutter bees
Recognise and prevent leaf damage by leafcutter bees in your roses and wisteria
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Nesting female bees cut out immediately obvious elliptical shapes from the edges of a leaf to make their cells for laying eggs. Since one female might need 20 or so cells, that's a lot of leaf cutting, particularly when the bee keeps returning to the same plant. It's only a significant problem when young plants are being defoliated or you're growing specimens for a show.
Symptoms
Bees snip out elliptical sections of leaf margins, particularly on roses, and use them to make thimble-shaped cells in their nests. However, they can remove quite a large area of leaf.
Find it on
roses, wisteria, epimediums
Organic
Wait for the solitary female and swish her away. Try to avoid killing the bees because they're invaluable friends to gardeners, pollinating flowers.
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