Red Mason Bee Osmia bicornis

This solitary, ginger-haired bee is one of nature's most accommodating architects, making it a favorite among bee enthusiasts and gardeners alike. Rather than excavating nests like many bees, it nests in preexisting holes and hollow stems, making it remarkably easy to support with simple bee hotels and nesting boxes. Remarkably, these docile bees—so gentle you can safely handle them—possess trichromatic color vision and can determine their offspring's sex based on body size, strategically investing more egg energy when they're large enough to raise daughters. Females mate just once with closely related males, making each bee a focused and devoted single-partner parent who tends her brood carefully.