General: Leaf-cutter Bees (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae) are small bees, about the size of a honey bee. They are black with narrow yellow rings around the abdomen. Leaf-cutter bees cut oval disks from leaves to use in building their nest, hence the name "leaf-cutter."

These bees nest in holes in the ground, in wood, or in other structures where they can bore a hole (even inside a garden hose, see below). They then insert the cut leaf (or leaves), rolled into a tube, into the hole to make a chamber for one egg. They place a ball of pollen inside the leaf tube, and lay one egg on the pollen. Repeating the process, the female wasp fills her hole with series of cut-leaf chambers, then seals them up with a waxy plug. Eventually the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the pollen, break out, and the the cycle repeats.