Kelly,

The leafcutter bees I have make fairly uniform cuts in the
leaves. The round holes are about 8-10mm in diameter and the
ovals are about 10-14mm X 20-24mm long. The bee itself is
quite close to a honey bee in size, as I recall. The edges of
the cuts are pretty smooth compared to the little notches that
root wevils make. The information I had was from a book
entitled something like BEES OF THE WORLD, which was in the
Everett Public Library collection and I was going from memory,
so I can't supply much in the way of other details.

Ed Schulz
Everett, WA

-----Original Message-----
From: Kelly Cassidy <lostriver at completebbs.com>
To: Ed Schulz <eschulz at gte.net>; tweeters
<tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, July 28, 2000 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: Non-bird; insect ID?


>
>>The leaves for the side of the capsule are oval in shape and
>>the end plugs are round. At my place they prefer the leaves
>>of deciduous azaleas, especially r. schlippenbachii; my
plants
>>are covered with leaves with perfect ovals and rounds cut
out.
>>I think they also like rose leaves.
>
>How big are the cut pieces? I looked at all the likely
plants nearest the
>nest. The only ones I found with possible leaf-cutter bee
holes were the
>green pepper and a petunia. The green pepper holes were all
very small,
>maybe 3 or 4 mm in diameter. Lots of bugs are chewing on the
pepper,
>however. It's the yard ice cream parlor. The petunia cuts
were bigger, but
>less symmetrical and there were only a couple. They were
nearly a cm in
>diameter.
>
>Kelly
>
>