Busy Bees Use Flower Petals For Nest Wallpaper : NPR

Have you ever seen such a lovely thing? The Osmia (Ozbekosima) avoseta bee uses flower petals for nest building!

These bee homes are simply gorgeous! I wish my house was so lovely.

This also serves to inspire me…flower petal honey, flower petal mead…I have hibiscus, chamomile, and a couple of others I can play with.

Bee well!

“These meticulous shells are just over a half-inch long and usually will house just one tiny egg. To prepare for her offspring, the mother collects pollen and nectar, which she carries back to the burrow in a nifty part of the digestive tract called the crop. She deposits this gooey blob of nutritional goodness in the bottom of the flower-petal nest. Then, she lays the egg, right on top of the gelatinous blob.”

Source and image credits:  Busy Bees Use Flower Petals For Nest Wallpaper: NPR

One mother bee may make around 10 nests, often nestling the single-cell berths near each other. (image credit Jerome Rozen/American Museum of Natural History)