It is well known that pest pressure varies from site to site, let alone region to region. What is less known and probably never studied is that same “pests” behave differently in different sites. It’s a complicated issue as insects change their eating habits based on food availability and who knows what else. I recently learned that plum curculio took about a century or more to develop a liking for peaches. Perhaps in areas in the northeast where they don’t bother peaches much it is because the local population there never adapted to them.
I have had carpenter bees living in the ornamental pieces of siding placed below gutters on the cement block covered with stucco part of my house (the original owners were 2 Greek mason brothers who used it as a summer home for their families). They’ve been there for as long as I have lived here, I believe, but they’ve never moved over to the cedar wood paneling on the stick-built part of the house that was added in '72 where they could have caused destructive damage.
My green house has pine panels that they love and they’ve done considerable damage to that wood, but I don’t really care- it won’t be hard to replace and I can even do it with greenhouse panels. They haven’t bothered with the pressure treated wood that is the frame of the thing.
I have numerous big raw cedar fence posts on the property that they enjoy nesting in, but they probably don’t go into the heartwood as I have not had to replace any of them due to damage.
It may be the avoid the important wood panels of my house because they are on the northeast and northwest sides of my house, but I recently replaced a wood garage door that faced southwest and was sheltered from wind and warmed by an asphalt driveway that they never drilled a single nest into.
So it appears that carpenter bees dismissed by some experts as useful pollinators because they may be prejudiced against them for what they do to wood and justify destroying them partially by claiming they are not good pollinators that destroy flowers when gathering pollen.
Is that a problem a single one of you has experienced?
The Mason bees I have purchased looked so much like small flies that it would be difficult to tell them apart if you didn’t know they were both out. Perhaps they are working incognito.
I learned to identify mason bees by being told by locals what they call a mason bee. The ones recognized by that name here look a lot like small honey bees. Your comment inspired me to do a bit a research, and sure enough, some look like flies, but some look like diminutive honey bees.
Some years I have a few honeybees and mason bees to help out but the carpenter bee shows up every year. They appear to be rough on the flowers but I don’t think there is any real damage.
Two weeks ago I heard and saw one single bumble bee. No other pollinators that I could spot anywhere.
Yesterday the sun came out and the wind died down, and it was like God flipped a switch! All of a sudden I was surrounded by buzzing bees. Carpenter bees were very busy in the apple blossoms.
Beautiful photos and I see no damage being done to the flowers. I should take some photos of them working my blueberry blossoms to prove that they don’t even damage them. How did you take the shots?
I had my iphone XR with me so I used that. The pictures are a lot sharper on my phone. The bees were very calm, buzzing all around me, so I could get up close to snap the pictures. I was so excited to see pollinators out. Finally!
I didn’t see the carpenter bees doing any damage to the flowers. They are not as graceful as the smaller bees, but not exactly like a bull in a china shop either.
Wasps seem to be my primary pollinators. And they hang around long after the deed is done, so I have to be careful where I put my fingers, when reaching into the foliage. Today, while I was thinning fruit, I saw quite a few wasps.
What kinds of wasps? They are complete non-factors here as fruit tree pollinators, but our population is mostly the two paper wasp species and their numbers are much too small in early spring to matter, even if they were interested in pollen.
What are they eating in your trees now? Here the bold faced hornets (wasps) and yellow jackets are virtually nonexistent now, but populations will build, some years to the point that yellow jackets are like a constant swarm close to the ground. Even then, they mostly come to the fruit trees to eat the fruit, unless they’ve chosen a tree for a nest- the common way to get stung is to grab a ripe peach that has yellow jackets inside a cavern they have chewed open.
Hmmmmm. I don’t know what kind they are. We have a lot of what we call ‘mud daubers’ here. But the ones I see on the trees are not like those. These are brown. Some have a bit of a stripe, I think, but not pronounced. I’ll look more closely next time I see one.
I only spotted a few bees other than the carpenter bees. These were a very small bee. And we have a lot of clover . . . so I was rather surprised to not see more bees. That doesn’t mean that they are not here . . . but I haven’t seen them.
Wasps look like bees, but are generally not covered with fuzzy hairs . As a result, they are much less efficient in pollinating flowers, because pollen is less likely to stick to their bodies and to be moved from flower to flower.
Well . . . @wdingus, “Somebody” is pollinating the trees I have. Hairy or not! LOL Maybe it’s the deer that chewed off the top of my Pink Lady on Monday night.
Just saying… I see wasps on blooms but their effectiveness at transferring pollen likely isn’t great. Keep in mind that lots of pollen blows around on the wind. Just ask my allergies!
