Carpenter Bees

Why do people insist on killing beneficial insects? Every where I go I see people selling traps to kill carpenter bees. There is much written on how destructive carpenter bees are but not much about their benefits. I try to tell folks these bees are pollinators to no avail. Folks insist they can do enough damage to make a house fall down and they keep selling traps to kill them.

Pollinator decline is a serious environmental issues. We all know about honey bee decline but carpenter bees are also pollinators although many folks don't believe they are. They don't eat wood but discard the wood to make their nests. Carpenter bees return to the same nest each year and are loyal to their birth place so killing them only encourages the next generation to bore a new hole in the same wood.

Not only are carpenter bees pollinators they aren't aggressive and rarely sting. Here are some examples of bee nests you can provide for carpenter bees. A small block of weathered, unpainted and unfinished wood is all that is needed to provide a good nesting site for these bees. Although there is research onThanks for reading and for all your comments.

Mining, Digger and Sweat Bees

This is the smallest bee I've ever seen. I took a photo and came in the house to see what kind of bee it was. I learned it's a mining, digger or sweat bee. This photo is a close up of the bee on a cone flower. The bee is less than 1/2 an inch long. These bees are not aggressive and rarely sting. Their stinger is so small it can barely penetrate human skin.

These small bees are important pollinators of fruit trees and alfalfa. These types of bees dig a hole in the ground and lay their egg on a pollen clump. It takes the mother bee 6 to 7 trips to get enough pollen for one egg. When the mother bee carries the pollen to the nest it weighs half her body weight. These bees nest in lawns or sides of hills. They are only active for 4 to 6 weeks and then dormant till the next year. Some of these bees are nocturnal. Here is a link to a resource for plants for these types of bees.

Please don't use pesticide on your lawn because we need our native bees for pollination. In fact if you can avoid all pesticides you'll be doing yourself a favor. We need all of our bees for pollination, without pollination we won't have many of our fruits and vegetables. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.