Wood Boring Carpenter Bees

Carpenter bees as the name have the behavior to drill into the wood.

Wood boring carpenter bees. Hang your trap directly above the carpenter bee holes. You can differentiate the two by examining the dorsal upper side of the abdomen. If it s shiny and hairless it s a carpenter bee. These bees have a habit of drilling holes into the wood and building galleries to breed and rear their young ones.

Carpenter bees do not feed on wood but bore into it to create nesting galleries where they lay eggs in the spring and take shelter in the winter. They don t eat wood. Unlike other common bees such as honeybees and bumble bees that live in colonies carpenter bees are not social insects and build individual nests into trees outdoors or into the frames eaves or sides of buildings. Because they build their nests in wood.

Carpenter bees genus xylocopa are solitary bees that burrow into wood. Carpenter bees create large round holes in any kind of unpainted wood. Belonging to the genus xylocopa carpenter bees are large bees having a size of around 3 4 to 1 inch. But they use the hole inside the wood as their nest.

There are small carpenter bees too that belong to the ceratinini family. A bumblebee by contrast has a hairy abdomen. Large carpenter bees excavate dry unpainted and weathered wooden objects such as the following. No it s not for their food.

The holes carpenter bees create may seem small on the outside but the galleries are much bigger and more damaging than meets the eye. If you don t have an infestation hanging traps is also a good. Carpenter bees do not eat wood but cause damage to structures by drilling circular holes to create tunnels inside wood. The only protection against carpenter bees is to regularly paint any bare wood or use vinyl or other types of siding.

Carpenter bees xylocopa spp a large colorful wood boring bee summary. You can find bee traps online in pest control and home gardening stores and in some department stores. Stained and preserved woods don t deter these pests. Wood boring carpenter bees resemble bumble bees but these large bees excavate tunnels in wood to make a nest whereas bumble bees nest in soil.

They can dig neatly through wood. Carpenter bees also known as wood bees because of their diet and choice of habitat are large black bees that look very similar to bumble bees. Now why are they called carpenter bees.