Leaf cutter bee

Well, not exactly yet.  Attended a macro bee painting workshop today - good to stay in out of the rain - and this is the start.  Spent some time peering into a microscope at details of small bees and this is from a photo. The blue bits are masking the white spots or bits I don't want to paint yet.  The female leaf cutter bee is only 8.5 mm and lives a solitary life.  She finds a tube like place (bamboo, elder stalk etc.) that she will line most beautifully with c shaped pieces perhaps cut from your rose bush leaves. When she has enough plugged against the rear wall and enough to make a chamber she forages for pollen which she collects on her abdominal hairs.  This is taken home, scraped off and she dribbles on it to make a hard compact blob upon which she lays an egg.  Then she seals up the compartment with the cut leaves, extends the sides/top/bottom very carefully and goes off to collect more pollen.  She may build up to 7 or more nests in the tube but the last two will be empty - just to fool the parasitic wasps that like to insert an egg into the last chamber which of course when it hatches will have no pollen to eat and thus succumb!  After her toil the exhausted leaf cutter bee keels over and dies.  The first of the eggs to hatch will be males for the mother has two ovaries and carefully selects the last couple of the eggs to be sterile and thus male.  Having hatched they hang around waiting for females to emerge upon whom they fall and after a small courtship that entails the female stroking her hairs and legs and antennae to make herself beautiful he mates with her.  After a whirlwind time of mating he keels over exhausted and dies.  After I have finished painting this I may go the same way, but I'll give it a whirl too!