Carpenter bees are oval bee shaped, large, about one inch long, and blue black in colour. They have six legs, and wings. Their class is insect, order-hymenoptera, kingdom-animalia-phylum-arthropoda, family-apidae, and species xylocopa.
Carpenter bees resemble bumble bees both in size and appearance. Carpenter bees’ top abdomen is free of hairs, and is of shiny black colour. Carpenter bees are solitary bees. The carpenter bee in action, drill through wood, only to build nests for themselves. They feed their young only. They build their nests in trees or in frames of buildings. Carpenter bee stingers are not barbed and they are able to sting many times. The large species of carpenter bees, Xylocopa virginica, is encountered in Pennsylvania.
The male bee guards the nest from the vicinity, and it is the male bee that is more prominent in the picture. Carpenter bees are large bees that are similar in appearance to bumble bees except, the top surface of the abdomen is almost free of hairs, and appears to be entirely black in carpenter bees. Female carpenter bee will chew the wood and make a tunnel to build a nest gallery. The worker bees are in-charge of gathering pollen and nectar from flowers to feed the larvae and members of the colony. The female carpenter bee chews and deposits the “frass”, the chewed dug out wood outside the nest. The tunnel openings could be deceiving as a couple of inches deep, but to the contrary, they may extend up to ten feet long! If you see large bees hovering near eaves or drilling in wood, it is an indication that you have encountered an attack of carpenter bees. The male carpenter bee is of white faced similar to that of a bald faced hornet. If you caught a white faced female hornet, she may sting you and also release an alarm pheromone, (a chemical signal) and alert many of her colleagues, worker bees, all with stingers, for the attack. It is very common for the male bee to approach people even for a quick movement or even a wave of a hand in the air. Sometimes they even hover close to people, using a scare tactic. It is merely a scare tactic, as the male carpenter bee is unable to sting. The females are not aggressive. The female bee is able to sting, but seldom does, only when she is extremely provoked, like being handled.
The young male carpenter bee and the females, go into hibernation during the winter months. Mating takes place in the spring. They then plan to have their young ones in August. The old tunnels are cleaned out and enlarged the old tunnels or excavate new chambers for their new born. The new born (larvae) is provided with “bee bread”, which is a rich mixture of pollen and regurgitated nectar, and protected until it developed. When food is served in every chamber, each chamber is sealed off methodically. The female bee creates six to eight chambers. When adult bees emerge in August, they feed on nectar. They then return to the tunnel in winter.