If you grow Staychys lanata ‘Lamb's Ear' or Verbasum thapsus ‘mullien' in your garden and you notice bare trails on the leaves, strips about 2 “ long and .01 “ in wide, you are supporting Carder Bees.

Carding refers to the teasing out or carding of wool or cotton with a comb like tool. The female Carder bee has five sharp teeth on each mandible for this task. She strips the long fibers from the plant leaf to construct her nest. Verbascum and Staychys leaf material is ideal due to its strength. Verbascum was called beggars cloth in England in the olden days when it was used to line shoes that had holes in them. It also provided warmth when stuffed under clothing.

Anthidium, or Carder Bees, are solitary bees that build their nests in preexisting cavities in walls, soil, wood, or stems. When the female finds a suitable nest site she will begin to gather the plant material. Walking backwards, she shears off hairs with her mandibles. These hairs are formed into a ball that weighs almost the same as the bee. This flock is tucked under the thorax between the front two pair of legs and flown back to the nest site. It takes six or seven loads to make one cell.

The nest will be in the form of a tunnel. She will stick a tuft of material to the back of the tunnel. The walls are covered with curtains that are made by holding the plant material against the top and using her mandibles to card it by pushing in her jaws and then opening them to tease out the fibers. A little saliva will glue the curtains in place. The cell will be lined in about forty minutes.

At this point it is time to provision the cell. Before leaving she puts some flock at the entrance to protect against earwigs and ants. It will take about 20 trips to provision each cell. Pollen and nectar are mixed into a viscous liquid where the egg will be laid half submerged. Food gathering takes about seven and a half hours per cell. This and the forty minutes to line the cell has taken up to eight hours plus. She will overnight in the entrance facing inward with her abdomen curved downward. This Carder Bee will repeat these tasks each day, weather permitting, until her egg supply is depleted. The terminal plug consists of bits of organic and inorganic matter. In twelve to eighteen days the eggs will hatch. At twenty three days the larva will spin a cocoon. Adults emerge either later that summer as the second generation of a bivoltine life cycle or over winter as prepupae and emerge the following spring.

The Anthidium male is unusual in the bee world in that they are larger than the female. They aggressively guard a territory around the female to protect her. A very speedy flier that will challenge almost anything that moves. Anthidium are often mistaken for wasps. Look for them in your garden. They are good pollinators.