Hello, I have what I believe to be "leafcutter" bees at my cabin, they seem to like the aspen in the back of the house (see pic). From what I have read they are very beneficial bees to have on your property, and we can work with them, the problem we are having is they have been making their nest under our wooden drip through deck, presumably boring into the wood and creating a nuisance underfoot. How can we relocate them to a more favorable area without killing them?
As far as I know, Leaf Cutter Bees do not bore into solid wood; they use existing holes or bore into soft, rotting wood. They will not damage your house. I have them show up occasionally in my Mason Bee nests. If you really have the leaf cutters, you should be able to attract them to wooden blocks with holes drilled in them. These will be similar or possibly identical to Mason Bee nests. I saw one Web site that recommended 8-10 mm holes, which is the same as Mason Bee nests.
We definitely have leafcutters, I can watch them working on the trees seen in the pic. I know that you can place alternate nests to attract them, my concern is that they may stay in the existing nests since they are in a perfect location for the bees already (the underside of my deckboards) which is not acceptable as they do sting if you step on them, so my question is when and how do we safely remove the existing nest, does the queen hibernate elsewhere at the end of the season like bumblebees and then we can take the nest (s) out? They have also been swarming our swimming pool and out little pond, we are located in ranch lands and there is very little water here other than irrigation for the fields, our neighbor has a bunch of commercial honeybee nests kitty corner so it is possible the ones in the pool are the honey bees and wee are dealing with 2 separate species. We plan to eliminate both of teh water sources since they will continually attract bees but the deck cannot be easily replaced or sealed up.
Leaf Cutter Bees are solitary; after each female has finished building nests and laying eggs, she dies. That has already happened to the Mason Bees, which are related. I don't know the timing for Leaf Cutter Bees, but you can move their nests any time after they have finished building them.
