Talk:Carpenter bee

message: I've noticed the Carpenter Bee's only come out to work under very specific conditions. Typically warmer weather. Today it is 68 outside. They're not out. What is the minimum temperature for a Carpenter bee to work?
--Temp from someone looking at one--
69 degrees In Central West Florida... One here giving me concern... I am a tad startled by their size... She's just pollinating...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.254.165.76 (talk) 16:00, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Temperature Conditions

message: I was happy that what I thought were black bees had made themselves a home near the entrance of my own new home. I only found out the other day they may be significantly damaging my home. Now I think I'd better get rid of them but I am chemically sensative and need a solution that won't poison me (my house is unpainted because even paint makes me ill, at least, any paint I've ever come across in this country).
Anyone knowledgeable about this?
:Note that this is intended to be a discussion about the article.  Therefore, I am twisting your question into a request to add a section on 'preventing carpenter bee infestations' in the article.  I will add what I know and hopefully it will be added to later. Kainaw 00:38, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Black bees in my home

message: From the article:
The bees appear to be equipped by nature with the ability to employ sunlight to generate the energy that permits them to keep awing for hours on end.  Their abdomens contain a small amount of a liquid substance.  
Many of the young are small and short-lived, persisting for only one summer.   Females over-winter in the nest, called a hibernaculum.  Males may overwinter in a burrow in the ground.
Why is the caption for the top two pics of the bees "robbing" nectar? Is this a proper term? I thought they collect nectar.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aximill (talk • contribs) 14:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Could an expert comment? 

message: Do Carpenter Bees have any defense mechanisms that could be harmful to humans?  Im glad everyone else sees them as freindly pets, I find them threatening, due to their size, bold colors and loud buzz.  They often are not afraid to buzz very close to humans.  So whats the verdict, can a carpenter bee sting or bite you?  Also, I have heard myths that it depends on the bee gender, can you clear this up?
:If you go back to a version from June, it states that males cannot sting.  Someone removed that.  Why?  If nobody can come up with a reason for removing it, I'll put it back in. --Kainaw (talk) 14:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose it was removed because it's common to all hymenoptera, since the stinger is a modified ovipositor. It is really not a remarkable characteristic of carpenter bees. Anyway, to answer the first question... yes they can sting, and more than once unlike honey bees, but they really aren't aggressive and you would have to seriously threaten them without any means of escaping to be stung. → SeeSchloß 11:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defense 

message: SgtVelocicaptor 17:04, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But it is not a carpenter bee, it is a bumblebee. Dyanega 06:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that bumblebees were rare.  Thanks for the info.SgtVelocicaptor 16:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Image of a tired bee

message: Can someone explain the mechanics of how they are able to drill into boards made of fairly hard woods like pine. I assume it's some sort of sharp cowl which vibrates acting over a fairly long period of time, but it seems like something of a tough feat. Would this be a good way to distinguish Carpenters from other sorts of bees or is it visually pretty minor? Thank you --Jolomo (talk) 04:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They open their jaws, press the tips into the wood, and buzz while scraping. They don't "drill" per se, and don't make their nests in very hard wood. A great many different kinds of bees make nests in wood and their jaws are not so very different from ordinary bees; the most common modification is extra "teeth" either along the edge, or on the back side of the mandible. Not the most visible of characteristics, but boring into soft wood is not really a difficult task when you're as small as an insect - there are tens of thousands of tiny beetles and other insects that have no problem tunneling into wood. Just take a plastic knife some time and try to cut a groove into some soft wood - you'll find that you can make good progress in very little time. Dyanega (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drilling mechanism 

message: I was like TooPatato these wonderful bee
s became pets once I educated myself about their behavior it has been 5 years now and they live on my back porch ranging from 4 to 8 a year, the male bee is fascinating and is fascinated to constantly inspect what you are doing. I once planted some corn not to far from the porch and one male bee after another came out to see what I was hoeing, I think it was the vibrating of working the hoe that got their attention. I do not recall once being hit by one and not even
a ounce of aggression, if anything it is like a dance the male bee will sometimes size you up, buzz low then buzz high moving vertically then flying off.
My main point of observation and a benefit of having them around:
I have no wasps in my backyard, around the house, and in my work shed in back...none. Not a hornet or a mud dapper. I have observed a few wasps over the years they will fly in and fly out and even inspect some of the Carpenter Bee holes but then be gone. Then one day I saw something
a Carpenter bee like a Kamikaze missile knocking a hornet to the ground , the hornet got back up and flew then the bee, I think the male bee buzzed then dove with velocity and intercepted the wasp with force like a hard hit on a football field or a missile intercept and again the wasp hurdled towards the ground, it regained its composure and regained flight and flew off albeit haphazardly. I have seen fellow Carpenter Bees duel in the skys and maybe that is territorial and a few times and the end of an evening I will find a dead Carpenter on the back porch during some of those battles. I thought I would just add this observation, it seems to use its size and brute force of interception to ward of predators and compete for territory. If anyone else can verify this behavior please let me know.--Aslanspal (talk) 15:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Read the article.  It mentions stingers - and states that females do have stingers. -- kainaw™ 15:27, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  An observed benefit of having them as pets or having them around 

message: For those who cannot accept the notion of these creatures being colloquially called wood bees without some laundry list of links try:
* http://www.e-bug.net/bug/bee/woodbees.shtml
* http://www.bugspray.com/article/carpenterbees.html
* http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-CYKX199206001.htm
* http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jee/1926/00000019/00000001/art00035
:Schneck says (1891) our carpenter or wood bee (X. virginica) slits the lower end of red clover corolla tubes, followed by honey bees getting nectar there.
--Belg4mit (talk) 03:05, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So, let's recap the above links: first is some pest company that shows a drawing of a bumblebee, the second lacks the term "wood bee" altogether, the third is a translation from Chinese (thus not an actual English term), the fourth is from 1926, and the last is from 1891. I've been studying bees for 30 years, and published research papers on carpenter bees, and have never heard the term "wood bee" used once in all those years, and those links you give aren't convincing evidence that there is a significant number of people who use the term - at least not in the last 80 years. WP policy does indeed allow editors to remove things that are followed by a vanishingly small minority, and - frankly - none of those links are a reliable source to indicate that the term "wood bee" has been in use since 1926. "Imagining" that there are people other than yourself that call them wood bees is a type of "original research". It's simple: find a research paper published in, say, the last 50 years, that indicates that carpenter bees are referred to colloquially, in English, as "wood bees". Australia, the UK, wherever - as long as native English-speaking people use the term and someone has documented its use. If you can't verify it, then you really, honestly, should not be pushing to include it. Dyanega (talk) 05:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: IMHO you are wrong, but a debate of two people is no debate. There is no harm in the inclusion of more, non-trivia information. I would like to point out though, that this sort of blindered and inflexible "enforcement" of "rules" is very off-putting and dissuades many contributors. --Belg4mit (talk) 15:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It is very difficult to prove a negative; I suppose that if you go around the world you will find someone somewhere that uses practically any name for practically any creature. I don't know, and am not inclined to follow up on, the history of this debate, but I am an entomologist from another anglophone country, and I have never heard of "wood bees" either. "Holzbienen" in German OK, and possibly in other languages, but it does not follow that it is a useful or accepted term in English, and even in Afrikaans the word is "houtkapperby", not "houtby".  Now, there are millions of terms one could coin for any living thing, some more charming than others, but one should encourage the most standard, and accordingly the most useful terms, rather than the most bewildering variety. We do not forbid their usage, but we are not compelled to encourage confusion or obscurity. So, since "wood bee" is in no way obviously superior to "carpenter bee", and certainly more obscure, I support omission of the word from the English article.JonRichfield (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wood bees 

message: I suspect that I am not using the resources properly, so anyone willing to correct me would be welcome. As you can see by consulting the article history, I have just removed a few of the External links that were egregious, unqualified spam. They were uninformative apart from advertising particular companies for arguable consumer services. There still is at least one entry that I am inclined to remove, but I invite other members to have a look and react according to personal insights before I do so.  JonRichfield (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Spam spam spam!

message: I need to make a few comments on the article.
1. I see images for Xylocopa violacea and Xylocopa micans. If this page is about carpenter bees, then the scientific classification should show only the genus and not one of the species. It shows an image of one of the species and the classification of another - this is inconsistent and it should be fixed.
2. The description of the carpenter bee needs to be consolidate in a section that could be labeled "Description". I see 3 instances of roughly the same description inside the "Characteristics" section.
3. It is not clear what "obligate pollinators" means. There should be an explanation.
4. "The tunnel functions as a nursery for brood and storage for the pollen/nectar upon which the brood subsists."
The sentence does not sound right - I think "The" should be "They". Please fix as necessary.
5. "Apart from outright predators, parasitoidal species of flies lay eggs in the entrance to the bee’s nest and the fly maggots live off the bee larvae."
This sentence is unclear and it needs to be improved.
:ICE77 (talk) 06:42, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on the article 

message: First, how long do they live?
Second, do they 'stay' in their nests permanently or do they migrate?
Third, are any varieties colored all yellow or orange or a yellow-orange?
I ask these because I have a piece of ornamental wood that's been hanging in my outdoor entryway for about 46 years that has a round hole in its front that a carpenter bee 'did' about 44 years ago and the only time that it's obviously in use is during the summertime here in Phoenix, AZ.  (And, yes, this is an annual occurrence/tradition which is why I posed the "migration" query.)
As far as I can tell, only one bee at a time 'lives' there.
However, there have been several years in which an all yellow/orange/yellow-orange carpenter-bee-looking insect cohabitated - - - in other words, both a black carpenter bee and this 'colored' one were seen using the entrance hole (sometimes one waiting right next to the hole for the other to move out of the way), flying around the wood at the same time, and were not aggressive towards each other.
I do not remember ever being "buzzed" or 'dive-bombed' by the colored one like the black one has done.
Can anyone find answers/info and incorporate into the article? 2600:8800:784:8F00:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 13:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some info not in article 

message: Are carpenter bees seen in Kerala 2405:201:F013:1A0:E90D:837E:257B:E692 (talk) 08:20, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: There are more than a dozen different species of Xylocopa in Kerala. There is a link, in the text of the article, to a published checklist of Indian species. Dyanega (talk) 17:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carpenter bees