2012 Veg Garden Native Bees

This little bee and it's friends arrived on the patio several weeks ago and began going into and out of the tiny holes on the underside of each metal crossbeam that makes up the patio cabana. They were few and small and didn't buzz around our heads so we left them to it. A week or so later we noticed they were carrying in bits of green leaves. They looked like about 3/4 of an inch of thick bladed grass. I took a closer look and saw a smallish, silver and gray striped fuzzy bee with no real stinger that I could find (not that I was super close). Now we saw that nearly every crossbar had it's own 'busy bee'. They were bringing leaf after leaf. A quick lookup finds we have native leafcutter bees. They say the cuttings are roundish but these really look leaf bladish. The one shown above looks a little waspish unlike the others and is yellow and black but still fuzzy with small or no stinger. We're glad they're here to help pollinate.