Carpenter bees get a bad rap. Their nature drives them to find tree trunks, into which they chew deep burrows. Unfortunately, they are not discriminating; to a carpenter bee, a tree trunk or downed limp looks a lot like a deck beam or support post, or some outdoor wooden furniture. Pretty much any exterior wood that is untreated and of sufficient thickness becomes a potential nest site, bringing them into conflict with humans, who are threatened by their wood-boring antics.
Carpenter bee nests sport a single circular hole, but may contain numerous branching tunnels within the wood itself, where the female lays eggs and raises her brood. The bees do not eat the wood; often a classic sign of a carpenter bee burrow is a pile of fine sawdust below it’s entrance.
Besides their nesting habits, this solitary bee is rather large, and combined with the loud buzz of its wings, people often assume it is dangerous or even aggressive.
The truth is, carpenter bees are mostly docile and just want to feed from flowers and live their lives. Only the females are capable of stinging, and the one article I read stands out for saying that, to get a carpenter bee to sting you, you’d almost have to grab them and do it yourself.
Regular coats of stain keep my local carpenter bees away from my deck, and so we coexist in harmony. They show a special affinity for the Rose-of-Sharon in my yard, and visit the blossoms with an apparent enthusiasm.
I find these bees especially easy to work with, from a photographic standpoint. Their large size and relatively slow speed makes it easy to track them and position myself for a shot, with no real fear of being stung. I was able to wait for this individual to turn around and begin crawling out of a magenta Rose-of-Sharon blossom to capture this photo, which remains one of my all time favorite macro shots to date.
In the full resolution version, you can even see the spikes on the pollen cells, which makes it apparent why they so easily cling to anything that might brush against them.