author(s)
SD Pradeepa and VV Belavadi

abstract
Understanding the floral preferences of solitary bee is sine qua non for enhancing the knowledge on bee-flower association. Keeping this in mind, the present study was undertaken to assess the foraging preferences of leaf cutter bees belonging to the family Megachilidae. Floral species were identified by comparing the pollen samples (collected from the nest) with the reference pollen slides prepared beforehand. Further, with the help of scanning electron microscopic analysis (SEM), we written morphological description for all the pollen species collected from megachilid nests. The analysis of the pollen sample collected from 373 nests belonging to species revealed that, the bees preferentially foraged on the flowers of 18 species for pollen. Of this, majority (12 species) belonged to the family Fabaceae and accounted for more than 95 percent of the food provided to brood. The remaining species were from Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Malvaceae, Convolvulaceae and Acanthaceae.