NATIVE BEES


houses look inviting when a carpenter bee passes through. By leaving dead standing trees where they are, and by tucking branches and other refuse piles somewhere on your proper- ty, you can give the carpenters in your area a place to settle besides your home. Carpenter bees seem to like reusing nests year after year, and they have a taste for conifer trees like pine, juniper, and  - male gets to work excavating a new nest in a suitable slab of wood. These pollination juggernauts don’t eat the wood that


they bore, instead either tossing the chaff right out of the hole or using it to make partitions inside of their gallery. Af- ter clearing enough space and gathering a ball of pollen and nectar, the female lays an egg on top and seals her young into a private sawdust room. The young then grow and emerge in late summer. The adults spend the winter sheltered in place and repeat the cy- cle the following spring. In tropical areas, there can be mul- tiple generations per year. Carpenter bees are some of the longest living bees. Adult females can survive for multiple years. Quite the feat compared to most other bees that must cram their entire life into a few short weeks. In some species,


young carpenter bees don’t leave the nest until a year or two after they hatch, spending their juvenile period performing house cleaning and guarding duties. True homebodies, they don’t move out easily. Thus sim-


ply plugging up carpenter bee holes never amounts to much in the way of deterring them. In many cases, your attempt  exit holes. Their nostalgia for previously used galleries means that once carpenter bees become used to a spot, they don’t want to leave. A homeowner’s best bet is to keep them from becoming interested in your tender sidings. Just put on some overalls and grab the paint can. Carpenter bees dislike paint- ed or stained wood. But if they have no other option, these tough bees can even live in pressure treated wood. Even though the bees themselves do little structural dam-


age, if left over a long time, congregations can whittle away at your house. Predators like woodpeckers will make short work of any wood covering the protein rich galleries packed with pollen and larvae from the outside world. In cases of heavy colonization, removing the galleries and relocating them to a protected forest location nearby can encourage them to stay in the forest.


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