Eastern Carpenter Bee
Scott Roche sends us this picture, along with this commentary: “I’m almost positive that this is a Xylocopa virginica (Eastern carpenter bee). Due to its black face it’s a female, which means I could have gotten stung. In retrospect taking a half dozen pictures of it from scant inches away probably wasn’t wise. Wikipedia says they aren’t aggressive so that’s good I suppose. In any case she was busy starting a new hole to lay eggs in and so could have really cared less what I was doing. This is part of the roof to my mother-in-law’s deck. Wikipedia also says that the holes they make aren’t usually very big so hopefully it’s right about that too. I’m guessing that she was probably around 3/4’s of an inch long.”
I was about to write back to Scott that this cannot possibly be a carpenter bee, as carpenter bees are tiny–like 5-8mm tiny–where this bee is around 18mm. Wayyy too big, right?
Well, I think we’ve already dismissed my expertise here. Turns out there’s two genuses of carpenter bees in the US: Ceratina, which is latin for “so very teeny” and Xylocopa, which is latin for “big honkers”.
Thanks for the great pic, Scott!
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
JFargo said,
May 7, 2008 @ 9:19 am
I have those out here too.
Don’t worry about the holes, Scott. They look like you removed a small screw from the wood. Not very noticeable or problematic, unless you get LOTS of them in one area, which as I understand doesn’t seem to happen much.
Scott said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:22 am
Yeah this was a biggun. I was glad that she was so busy. It let me get some good pics and practice my manual focus.
tceisele said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:56 am
Here’s something that was just pointed out by a friend of mine:
http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-your-point+and+shoot-into-a-super+camera
It’s talking about software that can be used to safely enhance the capabilities of a lot of the newer Canon Powershots to allow it to be programmed for things like time lapse photography, producing images in RAW mode, taking the pictures when motion is detected, automatically bracketing to get the brightness right, automatically taking a series of pictures while changing the focus distance, and all sorts of other possibly useful actions that don’t come standard on the camera. And, this is done without messing with the camera firmware (it’s a program that you install on your memory card), so it isn’t supposed to be capable of turning your camera into an expensive, inert brick like a lot of firmware hacks can.
Unfortunately, my A95 is too old to be one of the supported cameras, but all the Powershots more recent than that look like they can use it.
Scott said,
May 7, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
WOOT!! Playing with this when I get home!!!
Kazriko said,
May 7, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
Some people actually put up boards with holes already drilled in them for the carpenter bees. They’re supposed to be much better pollinators (per capita) than those slacker honey bees.
Alan said,
May 7, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
Wow - extreme close-up! But he is upside down and looking at the picture for too long gets me a bit woozy… My brain keeps trying to flip the picture over in my head!