Cool Facts About Carpenter Bees
- Carpenter Bees get their name from their amazing carpentry skills. That’s right, these little bees are known for drilling perfect holes in trees and other wooden structures in order to create their nests
- These particular insects resemble the more popular Bumble Bee in both size and appearance, however, today’s featured animal is not nearly as social as the Bumble variety.
- Unlike many other bees it takes a lot of effort to get a female Carpenter Bee to sting you (the males don’t sting at all). You will need to be pretty aggressive to achieve your stinging goal…unless you catch one on a bad day.
An Anti-Social Bee
Normally when you think of bees you think of being stung, which we just found out isn’t a concern with Carpenter Bees. You may also picture a nice big bee hive with a large colony living inside. We alluded to this earlier but Carpenter Bees have a completely different lifestyle then the good ol’ regular bees. As mentioned, they are not social animals and as such don’t create a hive with hundreds of room mates, Instead they prefer to lead a solitary life and live in small nests they make by boring into wooden structures. It just goes to show you that not all bees are alike and we shouldn’t paint all of them with the same brush.
Protecting Your Territory
When they aren’t destroying your property by drilling holes, the Carpenter Bee will be on the lookout for tasty food. What do they eat? Carpenters of course! Okay, seriously, much like other bee species, this particular variety also has a sweet tooth (or perhaps a sweet proboscis) for nectar and pollen. Nothing better than a good, hearty, bowl of pollen to start your day. The Carpenter Bees especially need this pollen during the spring when they become a little more aggressive and could use the extra energy as they protect their potential nest sites. They dissuade intruders from entering their territory by hovering and dashing towards anything that even looks at them the wrong way. Again, they can sting but usually they prefer these other methods and only use the sting as a last resort.
