- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It wasn't the Battle of the Sexes.
It was the Battle of the Males.
I spotted two male carpenter bees buzzing loudly over the salvia (sage) in our back yard Saturday morning. Each was lying in wait for a female, but instead found a competitor.
Now male carpenter bees are quite territorial and these two were no exception. The would-be suitors chased one another all over the yard, from saliva to salvia. One would buzz into a blossom for a quick nectar fix and the other would aggressively chase it away.
One stopped long enough, however, for me to capture his photo.
Ol' Blue Eyes.
UC Davis entomologist-pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, professor emeritus, identified this male as a Xylocopa tabaniformis orpifex Smith
It's the most common carpenter bee in the Davis area, Thorp said. "It loves to nest in redwood structures: fences, arbors, picnic tables, etc. It is the smallest of the three carpenter bees in California. The males are quite variable in hair color on the thorax: from virtually all dark, to some yellow in front of the wing bases, to virtually all yellow on top."
Another carpenter bee increasingly found in the Davis area is the valley carpenter bee. The sighting of the male, a green-eyed fuzzy yellow "teddy bear," prompts lots of calls to the UC Davis Department of Entomology. "What is it?" they ask.
We point them to our Web page for the scoop on the three types of carpenter bees found in California.
As spring unfolds, expect to see more of them.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Irving Berlin wasn't writing about carpenter bees when he penned "Easter Bonnet":
In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it
You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade
I'll be all in clover and when they look you over
I'll be the proudest fellow in the Easter parade
However, if you watch carpenter bees move from flower to flower as they gather nectar, you're bound to see one with its head inside a blossom.
An Easter bonnet, to be sure.
I captured this image of a carpenter bee visiting a California native wildflower, "Bird's Eyes" or "Bird's-Eye Gilia" (Gilia tricolor), on the UC Davis campus. It's aptly named. It's a light lavender and purple tubular flower with a yellow throat and powder-blue stamens.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's not spring until you see honey bees, carpenter bees and butterflies on Tidy Tips.
That would be Layia platyglossa, a wildflower native to southern California. Its common name is "Tidy Tips" or "Coastal Tidy Tips." It's a daisylike flower with yellow petals tipped in white, thus the name. It's a member of the aster family.
A flower bed in the center of the UC Davis campus (near the Science LaboratoriesBuilding) boasts an intermingling of the yellow-and-white Tidy Tips and sky-blue Desert Blue Bells (Phacelia campanularia).
Gorgeous!
Insects think so, too. On any given day you'll see honey bees, carpenter bees, butterflies and lacewings holding family reunions.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Plumbers, especially a plumber named "Joe," are hogging the news a lot lately.
But what about the carpenters? What about the carpenter bees?
The carpenter bee, a black bee larger than a bumble bee, burrows into dead trees, logs and your unpainted or unvarnished fence posts or deck.
You’ll see it nectaring flowers, too. Below, this female carpenter bee (Xylocopa) is robbing nectar from sage. Maybe she's Josie the Carpenter?
You’ll hear the carpenter bee before you see it.
Its buzz is loud and it means business.
The next thing you notice: the eyes. They're huge.
Carpenter bees, like most adult insects, have compound eyes. The surface contains circular or hexagonal areas called facets. Each facet is the lens of a single eye unit or ommatidium. The lenses of the ommatidia form images.
Sound complicated? Well, an eye is nothing more than an organ of vision sensitive to light rays or a complex light receptor. (Caution: Do not call the eyes of your family and friends "complex light receptors." You will get no points.)
Insects with compound eyes readily detect motion and sense ultraviolet light better than we humans do.
The better to see you, m' dear.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Robber at work.
No, this isn't a bank heist or a gas station hold-up or a home invasion.
A carpenter bee is slitting the sides of salvia (sage) to steal the nectar.
Floral larceny! Book 'em, Danno!
Carpenter bees are nectar robbers. Nectar robbers pierce or bite into the corolla of a flower to remove the nectar. They can be birds, insects or other flower visitors.
But wait, nectar robbers aren't all that bad. They pave the way for our beloved honey bee to gather nectar.
The carpenter bee is often mistaken for a bumblebee because of its size and color. The most striking difference: the carpenter bee's abdomen is shiny, smooth and black, while the bumblebee's abdomen is fuzzy, covered with dense black and yellow hairs.
Unlike the bumblebee, the carpenter bee is a pest. To make its nest, the C-bee tunnels into wood, often weakening structures. It's a fairly decent pollinator, however, when it lands on open-faced flowers.
The C- bee can't creep into a tubelike flower to steal nectar, so it bites a hole into the corolla with its proboscis. It's a show of force. An end run. Touchdown!
If you see a floral larceny in process, don't dial 9-1-1 or consult Section 211 of the Penal Code. Just think of our besieged, beleagured and embattled honey bees that will benefit from this "act of crime."
