Carpenter Bees Spend Their Time Pollinating And Fighting

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This year’s weather has been crazy. One day last week it was 34 when I went out at 9 a.m., and it was 85 that afternoon—and even hotter the next day. My peach trees usually bloom slowly, taking several days for all the buds to open. Not this year! The sudden heat caused them to open overnight.

When our peach trees bloom, the yard is usually a-buzz with all kinds of bees, wasps and flies. This year, about all I see are carpenter bees (Xylocopa). They are good pollinators and they seem to be taking their job of pollinating quite seriously, but they do spend a lot of time fighting! I’m quite distressed to see almost no honey bees. We’ve been hearing about the decline in honey bees for several years, but this is the first time that I’ve ever noticed such an absence where I live.

Carpenter bees are large black-and-yellow bees, often mistaken for bumble bees, but it’s easy to tell them apart. Bumble bees are fuzzy all over, but carpenter bees have shiny, black, leathery abdomens with no fuzz. Unfortunately, bumble bees are also in decline, and I haven’t seen any in years.

Unlike honey bees and bumble bees, carpenter bees do not live in colonies. They live in mated pairs and they are very territorial. Like other bees, only the females can sting, but they are not aggressive and only sting in defense of themselves or the nest.

Males may be stingless, but they fearlessly defend their territories from other males and larger creatures. They fight by head-butting, grappling in mid-air and knocking each other to the ground. They threaten humans and pets by flying in their faces aggressively. Of course, it is just a bluff, but anyone who doesn’t know that will probably flee!

Carpenter bees emerge from hibernation in spring to mate and start their homes. Males come out first to set up territories. Males have white or yellow faces and females have black faces. It is easy to see when males are flying in your face (and females don’t do that).

A few years ago, I heard from a reader who said that a big bee waited outside her door every day and chased her, year after year. That is not unusual. Her home was obviously in that bee’s territory and future generations continued to live there.

While carpenter bees are important pollinators, they are also pests because they drill holes into wood of decks, porches, etc. They do not eat wood; they make tunnels to live in. They need wood at least two inches thick, and they usually start tunneling on the underside of beams. They drill against the grain for an inch or so, then turn 90 degrees and drill with the grain for several inches. They usually (note that I said USUALLY) don’t bother painted or pressure-treated wood. The female does all the drilling while the male stands guard.

People generally notice the bees when males start dive-bombing them. Then they find round, dime-sized holes where the bees are working, with little piles of fine sawdust on the floor below. In nature, carpenter bees live in firm branches of dead trees.

The female digs out rooms along the tunnel, one for each egg she lays. The rooms are supplied with nectar and pollen and sealed. The larvae hatch, eat the supplies and get no further attention from their parents, who fly off and visit flowers until they die in summer. The larvae pupate in their rooms and come out as adults in summer.

The young bees feed and fatten up, returning to their home nest holes to sleep away the winter and start the cycle again in spring. Generations of carpenter bees often use the same tunnel year after year, cleaning it out and lengthening it in spring.

Since we do need carpenter bees as pollinators, I hope you will not kill them. The best defense is a coat of paint or stain and to caulk up bee holes.

You can help the bees by providing home sites using a few feet of untreated 4×4 or a sound, dead tree branch with bark removed. Attach it to an upright stake, fence post or other object so that a bee can drill into the underside, and see if anyone moves in.

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Send your insect questions to Claire Stuart by e-mail at [email protected] or write her (with self-addressed stamped envelope) in care of Living Section, The Journal, 207 W. King St., Martinsburg, WV 25401.

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