Carpenter bees are much maligned with claims that they are not useful pollinators. Well they sure could fool me. I’ve read in academic derived guidelines that they destroy blueberry flowers when gathering pollen but they are the major tenders of my blueberry plants and I get heavy crops every year. The bumble bees don’t really show up here until it’s too late to help the fruit trees much. The carpenters don’t go after any structural wood in my home and only have made homes in some decorative trim I don’t care about and wood in my greenhouse as well as cedar posts.
Here’s a link to an ad I find offensive because I’m a CB fan. I realize some people have important wood to protect, but on cool days when other pollinators can’t be found, especially honeybees, my carpenter bees are hard at work in my fruit trees. On the other hand, this might be a good way to keep them from causing structural damage without eliminating them from your property.
your bumbles must be slackers. they are the only early pollinators here and ive seen them out in the low 50’s we have orchard mason bees and hover flies but ive never seen a carpenter bee. probably too cold for them here.
One thing to keep in mind: You know those super cute condominiums for carpenter bees you can buy or build? They are actually horrible for them. Carpenter bees are pretty solitary by nature, when clustered together like that disease and pests are more likely to decimate them. Best approach is smaller homes spread around. a wire mesh above their lairs works wonders to stop woodpeckers and similar birds from eating them.
In my yard, bumblebees and Mason bees are major pollinators in early spring. The bumblebees start working early and going home late, work from colder days and warmer days. They are major contributors to the backyard orchard. They are welcome to set nest in my yard.
I have read somewhere that bumblebees population has been declined rapidly. Some are in danger of being distinguished. That is too sad. I am trying to let plants /weeds grow to flower as long as I am not going to use that pieces of soil. I try to provide continuous pollen for bees to collect in my yard so they don’t have to fly to the neighbors where they spray tons if chemicals trying to get rid of weeds/ bugs/plant diseases…at the end they also get rid of bees:weary:
Bumblebees many times make there homes in rodent/mouse dens and do a great job at evicting the problem tenants.
For me my best plant for bumblebees has been bee balm / bergamont. It has such deep nectar that it always saves nectar for bumblebees and for my area lines up with their dearth. Its always loaded with bumbebee queens and workers
Because bumblebees are ground nesters they are extremely damaged by herbicides and ground applied pesticides and this has reduced their habitat greatly
One other heroic thing about carpenter bees is they are much braver as far as weather conditions go. When it is cold or windy or raining a bit the carpenter bees might be the only pollinators out.
They have a bunch of nests by the front of our house and we get to see them doing their dances etc in our driveway. Occasionally a visitor gets scared by them but they have never bitten anyone. One of the neighbor kids would feed and pet them. I’m not sure how she got them to be her friends but it was an odd sight.
yep. got a bunch of mason bee houses with jap. knotweed tubes in there around the property for them to breed in. got them covered with 1/4in hardware cloth to keep the peckers out. change out the tubes for new ones every spring.
They might be the only pollinators out but every May the squash racket would come back out of storage and my husband would dispatch them quickly for making holes in the shingles of our house! They aren’t worth the damage they can do. A friends house looked like it was shot up by Machine Gun Kelly!
ive found bumbles caught out in a cold snap just sitting on my plants vibrating their wings to keep warm. they are so sluggish you can pet their backs and they dont move. once the sun hits them, they go back to work again.
I keep finding holes in my gingerbread house. Maybe I shouldn’t have built it out of food. I once built a grass hut in a cow pasture, and it disappeared without a trace the next day. Nature has no sense of humor.
As far as I can tell we don’t have any mason bees locally. It’s just bumbles, wasps, and maybe carpenters. I have trouble telling the difference between them and bumblebees.
Although I agree that they are excellent pollinators, they have done significant structural damage to my home. I ran them out of the house and now they appear to have moved into my exterior wood deck framing. If you see them hovering around and entering through little holes or cracks in the side of your house I would recommend exterminating them ASAP. Here is a short video of the damage to the side of my house. https://youtu.be/7lhBwlBLXGg
That is very odd . . . ‘a bee whisperer’?
I was disappointed to know that carpenter bees are destructive. They are somewhat like dragonflies - in that they are very curious . . . hovering near a person’s face and coming back again and again. To make contact, like little aliens?
And @mrsg47 - I laughed when I saw your post about the squash racket!
Here’s our cheapo racket, ready and waiting at the kitchen deck door. This one is one of 3 I bought last year, to replace the original one that my husband beat to pieces with his ‘Whack-a-Bee’ pastime!
Did your husband keep a tally? Mine does. Always trying to beat his last numbers!
A ‘termite guy’ told me that if you take WD40 - the can with the long ‘hose’ or straw - and squirt it down the holes they’ve made - they will come crawling out and die. It works . . . but they still seem to come back the next year in droves.
Bumblebees, orchard/mason bees, hover flies, and a few other insects probably contribute the majority of the pollination duties here. I don’t doubt that carpenter bees would as well. They’re just so destructive… Well not so much them as the huge number of woodpeckers we have which will rip deck railing/boards to splinters getting to them. I’d probably leave them alone if they’d only infest wood I didn’t care about.
Like others have said, Bumbles are typically the earliest “bees” I see on orchard tree blooms.
