Eastern Carpenter Bee - Xylocopa virginica
Having recently uploaded a video of this robust specie to the blog's YouTube channel, I thought it fair to revisit the specie here with a showcase of new images. In today's photographs, we observe both male and female individuals among flowering plants across April-August! From these pictures, can you tell the male Bees apart from the females without checking another post? I think you can: all you have to do is look at the face of the Bee that you've found. Male Carpenter Bees will have a patch on their face and larger eyes compared to the female. If you can remember that and positively identify your Bee, the male can be handled safely as he will lack a stinger. As well, since a male Carpenter Bee can be territorial, you can relax if one sees you and/or attempts to charge you while buzzing fiercely as his threat is an empty one. For female Carpenter Bees, exercise care and be gentle, but preferably leave handling them to professionals as they can sting multiple times (their stinger is smooth). Although this Bee specie can use its mandibles to chew up wood and bore circular cavities in wood, this specie is not expected to bite in defense, but please don't poke their faces.
Instead, enjoy a view of their mandibles in action within these pictures as we see what the females and males are getting up to. Not to go out of order, but for 2021, the males were the first individuals I was able to find and photograph. While Carpenter Bees may not form colonies, the females still need to mate, and this is where the males (drones, technically) come in. It seems that the males perish soon after mating, but there's still time to enjoy all the bounty that spring has to offer. The females meanwhile seem to get to enjoy more of the summer months, which means a greater amount of flowers to enjoy. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that all flowers are built just for them (the specie as a whole). Although the male Bees were able to find sweet magnolia blossoms to drink from and pollinate, the female Bees here engaged in nectar robbing and sipped from the base of the flower. This isn't a male/female thing as males will nectar rob too. Rather, small and narrow flowers aren't the best fit for this rotund Hymenopteran. Open-faced flowers, large blossoms and shallow-based flowers are more suitable as they not only feed the Bee, but also allow the Bee to pollinate the flower with its visit.
Pictures of the female Bee were taken on June 10, July 21, August 3 and 21, 2021. Pictures of the male Bee were taken on April 10 and May 1, 2021. All images were taken with a Google Pixel 4.
