Did you know that these beautiful flower nests are made by a special type of bee for their larvae?
We all associate bees with building bee hives, being a colonial organisation and having a Queen Bee.
However, an unusual bee species called ‘osmia avosetta’ creates beautiful flower nests made from flower petals to protect their larvae.
The mating females, without the help of worker bees, create these wonderfully colourful homes for their young.
During the course of 1 – 2 days, the mother bee sources petals from various flowers to create the nest and then places a single bee egg inside this new ‘Flower Home’.
The bee bites off the petal from the flower, flies back to its new nest and applies a thin coat of mud between each new layer of petals.
The larve is then placed inside and the nest is sealed.
A few days later the egg hatches into a larvae and spins itself a cocoon inside the beautiful nest, i.e. quasi a home inside a home.
“It’s not common for bees to use parts of plants for nests,” says Dr. Jerome Rozen of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
“There’s a demand for biologists to know bees nowadays, … they are the foremost animal pollinators of plants, and tremendously important for maintaining ecosystems — not only crops but also for conservation.”
Read more about this phenomenon that Dr. Rozen researched extensively here.
To turn your home into a cocoon with beautiful flowers, why not treat your ‘nest’ to one of our wonderful floral fragrances?
At this time of the year and fitting with the theme of ‘bees’, we recommend ‘Orangery Blossoms‘, as it contains a warming honey-note in its base.
