"What role does the carpenter bee play on the grand stage of the Sonoran Desert Honey?”
The answer is that the carpenter bee ranks as an important pollinator of the flowering plants, particularly those with large open fragrant blooms. Diligently, if unwittingly, it gathers pollen grains from the male parts of blossoms and delivers them to the female parts of other blossoms (of the same species), triggering the process of fertilization and seed formation. As a reward, it wittingly takes pollen, nectars and oils that it uses to set a banquet table for its larvae. The carpenter bee contributes substantially to the annual showcase of wildflowers in our desert basins and mountain flanks. In the near future, it may enlist, at the behest of researchers and farmers, in more commercial enterprises.

What is a Carpenter Bee Anyway?
The carpenter bee, along with some 25,000 other named species of bees in the world, belongs to an order called “Hymenoptera,” which also includes wasps, hornets and ants. Several carpenter bee species (of the seven in the United States) occur in the Southwest. The mountain carpenter bee, for example, occurs across the western U. S., said Lane Greer, “Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees,” Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas Technical Note. The valley carpenter bee occurs in Arizona and California.

A robust insect roughly the size of a small pecan, the carpenter bee is the only really large bee in the Southwest that is metallic blue-black to black, according to Floyd Werner and Carl Olson, Insects of the Southwest. Typically, the carpenter bee has a bare, black, and polished-looking abdomen, or rear body segment, probably its most distinguishing feature. Its legs have dense, electrostatically charged hairs to which pollen adheres when the insect visits blossoms. In some species, the male has a yellow face, and the female, a black face, according to the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service Internet site. The male valley carpenter bee has a tan-colored body, and the female, the usual black body, according to University of Arizona.

In the desert, carpenter bee females nest in sotol and various yucca and agave bloom stalks, or they may take up residence in dead tree trunks and limbs, firewood or wooden structures. Beginning in the spring, a female, like a miniature carpenter, will burrow a half-inch-diameter horizontal tunnel so perfectly circular that it could have been produced by a power drill. She leaves, in her wake, a small pile of sawdust beneath her construction site. Within her tunnel, which extends perhaps six to 10 inches deep into wood, she excavates a gallery where she deposits her eggs.

With a home constructed for her family, she “then visits local flowers to gather pollen and nectar,” said the University of Arizona. “The female rolls the pollen into a ball, and pushes it to the back of the tunnel where she lays an egg. She loosely plugs the end with sawdust chips and other materials, forming a chamber roughly one inch long. She then goes to acquire more pollen and repeats the process until the tunnel is filled with chambers full of growing bees.” Her work done, she leaves her gallery behind, her parental duties done. After five to seven weeks, the young bees burrow out of the tunnel, feeding on pollen balls, then emerging to take up their own lives.

Often a female carpenter bee will re-use tunnels and galleries, and “Sometimes several bees will use the same entrance hole, but each ‘family’ will have its own gallery…” according to Michael G. Waldvogel, “Unlike Their Busy cousins, These Bees are Boring,” North Carolina State news release. Since a female always maintains her own gallery, even if she shares a tunnel, the carpenter bee holds a place among the “solitary” bees, which account the vast majority of the world’s 25,000 bee species. (“Social” bees, for example, honeybees, account for the balance.)

In the spring, especially around nesting sites, the male carpenter bee may turn into a perfect showoff, careening and buzzing through the air and bumping clumsily into whatever gets in his way. He wants you to think that he’s aggressive and threatening—a bully. But he’s bluffing. He has no stinger.

The female, as you might expect, behaves with far more dignity and restraint. She wants you to think that she’s a lady. But if you intrude into her space, she may attack. She will not be bluffing. She does have a stinger. She can inflict a painful wound.

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