Most people think of bees as yellow insects with black stripes. But there are other varieties: black individuals. Carpenter bees are found in the wild; domestication is not yet possible. In total, there are more than 700 varieties of carpenter bees, depending on their distribution area: American, German, African, Sicilian, European, Central Russian.
Description and features
All over the world, scientists identify more than 20 thousand species of bees. Among these countless insects, the carpenter bee occupies a special place. The official name of this insect is violet xylocopa. In natural conditions it is quite difficult to see it, but in the photo the carpenter bee looks amazing.
Its distinctive feature from its counterparts is the color of the body and wings. The bee's body is black, and its wings are dark blue with a purple tint. The bee is covered with short black hairs. The mustache is also black, but has a reddish tint on the inside.
Distinctive features also include shaggy legs and large, powerful jaws that are capable of grinding fairly strong materials. The common carpenter bee always chooses either a tree or anything made of wood as its home.
The bee collects pollen and pollinates plants several times more efficiently than other flying insects, since it has a thick layer of hairs on its legs. But if an insect has settled next to a person’s home, you should not expect anything good. Trees and furniture can be damaged forever.
Interestingly, in terms of its size, the carpenter bee stands out significantly from other bees. Its average length is about 2.5 centimeters. Large individuals reach 3 centimeters. These sizes make the insect look like a bumblebee or a huge fly. It is very easy to determine that a bee is nearby, since the wings, although not large compared to the body, work very actively and make a loud buzzing sound.
It is worth noting that a carpenter bee never attacks a person without reason. As a species they are not very aggressive. Only females have stings. However, of a carpenter bee sting . By biting, insects inject poison into the wound. It provokes severe swelling, which can last up to five days. The poison affects the human nervous system.
When bitten, side effects such as nervous shock often occur. You should be careful - a bee sting on the neck is fatal for both humans and animals, as the airways become swollen. Oxygen supply is blocked and death can occur within minutes if emergency medical care is not taken.
How dangerous is a carpenter bee sting?
The insect is not aggressive towards humans. But this behavior is observed until a real threat appears. If this is not the case, the insect does not pay attention to the presence of a person and continues to go about its business. Drones don't attack at all. The female's venom is quite dangerous due to the fact that it causes large swelling of the tissues. A bite to the throat is fatal.
Kinds
Xylocopa is a very ancient bee. It existed long before modern civilization and is considered a kind of “living fossil.” Scientists count more than 700 species. The carpenter bee lives in different parts of the planet. In the vastness of America you can find an amazing subspecies that is completely black in color.
They are much larger than their Russian relatives and are particularly aggressive. Cases of this bee attacking a person are often recorded. The black carpenter bee to collect pollen twice a day - at dawn and in the evening, at dusk.
In European territory, carpenter bees are found in Germany. Surprisingly, this particular species is practically immune to various diseases. They have strong immunity. The harshest and most dangerous continent, Africa, has its own species of insect. It is mainly found in Tunisia and Algeria.
A distinctive feature is a flat, wide belly and long mustache, about 6 millimeters. African carpenter bees are very aggressive and dangerous, in principle, like all animals on the continent. In addition, after stinging a bee, it smears its victim with propolis, which is very difficult to wash off from the skin and clothes.
May cause a severe allergic reaction. You need to be very careful, avoid the bee and under no circumstances provoke it with sweeping movements of your arms and legs. Bumblebees are also considered carpenter bees.
Many scientists are inclined to believe that bumblebees are a subspecies of xylocopa. But they have a traditional yellow and black color. The level of aggression is very high. They can attack both animals and humans without warning.
Symptoms: pain, itching, swelling, skin rash and others
The local reaction manifests itself within the first minutes in the form of burning, itching and pain. Next, swelling occurs and the skin begins to redden.
A few minutes after the bite, a burning sensation, swelling, and redness of the skin occurs.
Such bite symptoms do not require specific therapy and disappear within 2–4 days. An allergic reaction develops within a few minutes, but passes within a few hours. Depending on the intensity, the following appear:
- Itching, swelling, redness of the whole body.
- Difficulty breathing, chills, increased heart rate.
- Skin rashes.
- Temperature increase.
Signs of toxic poisoning:
- nausea;
- vomit;
- dizziness;
- abnormal heart rate;
- weakness;
- loose stool.
These symptoms appear only with multiple bites.
Lifestyle and habitat
The carpenter bee is an insect that prefers warm climates. That is why you practically cannot find it in the northern regions and continents, where low temperatures prevail. Favorite places to build a home are steppes and forests. Especially many species of xylocopa live in the southern parts of Russia and the Caucasus.
Perhaps this is the only type of bee that prefers to live on its own, without even forming small families. They do not gather in swarms and live individually, choosing their habitat to suit their taste. Most often these are places where there is dead wood. The nest can be found in a telegraph and electric pole, in a wooden house, in the walls of outbuildings, even in an old closet.
When choosing a place of residence, the carpenter bee is not at all guided by the availability of food. This is not the main thing for her. Possessing powerful wings, the insect is able to fly great distances every day to obtain nectar. Hardy insects are able to move away from home to a distance of more than 10 kilometers and return back.
As a rule, insect activity begins with the onset of the first stable warm days, early or mid-May. Active flight continues throughout the summer months and ends at the end of September, when the temperature at night drops below five degrees. In rare cases, if weather conditions permit, the common carpenter bee continues to operate in October.
Interesting Facts
The carpenter bee is a peaceful insect. She can use the poisonous sting for self-defense or to protect future offspring. You should not touch her nest, so as not to provoke the bee's wrath.
A bee can become food for insectivorous birds, frogs, and spiders. But thanks to their large size and durable housing, the carpenter rarely becomes their prey.
The carpenter bee is one of the most ancient insects on Earth. It appeared about 100 million years ago and is a living relic.
This species of bee is listed in the Red Book of Russia. The reduction in numbers is associated with cutting down dead wood and applying paints and preservatives to the surface of wooden posts and buildings. The list of protective measures includes the identification of bee nests, their preservation, as well as a ban on catching these rare insects.
Nutrition
The purple carpenter bee does not have any special nutritional requirements. She, like all her relatives, eats nectar and pollen. In search of enough pollen, a bee searches about 60 flowers a day. Bees are especially fond of acacia and red clover, whose flowers contain twice as much pollen.
The carpenter bee collects pollen and uses its own saliva to soften it. The resulting composition is diluted with nectar. It is stored in special honey grooves and serves to prevent pollen from falling off during long flights.
Bee saliva contains colonies of microorganisms that immediately begin to work as soon as pollen enters the grooves. The fermentation process begins. It turns pollen into the so-called bee bread - bee bread. Bee bread is consumed by both adult bees and newly born bees.
Bees producing offspring, thanks to secret glands, soften the beebread and turn it into royal jelly, rich in minerals and vitamins. The larvae feed on it. Royal jelly is a very valuable substance that people use in cosmetology and medicine.
Which bumblebees do not build nests and do not collect nectar?
Not all bumblebees have exemplary families, the representatives of which perform the functions assigned to them. There are so-called cuckoo bumblebees (also known as parasitic bumblebees or whisperers) (lat. Psithyrus), which belong to the subgenus of social parasites from the genus of bumblebees and include 29 species. These lazy people do not build their own nests and do not collect nectar. Each of the parasitic species, as a rule, looks very similar to its host. Female cuckoo bumblebees can sometimes be distinguished only by the absence of pollen-collecting devices (brushes and baskets) on their legs. A female cuckoo enters a bumblebee's nest and lays eggs. Worker bumblebees feed the larvae as if they were their own. Therefore, cuckoo bumblebees do not need workers. Some species of cuckoo bumblebees, such as Bombus Rupestris, Bombus campestris, Bombus barbutellus, Bombus quadricolor, parasitize several species of bumblebees. Some species of parasitic bumblebees have only one host: for example, Bombus bohemicus chooses the burrow bumblebee (lat. Bombus lucorum) as its host. Having penetrated the host's nest, cuckoo bumblebees behave differently: some species are aggressive, they kill the queen and guards, others coexist for some time.
Photo credit: Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 3.0
Reproduction and lifespan
The purple carpenter bee does not welcome any kind of neighborhood. With the onset of spring, it is time for bees to have offspring. The female takes a long time to choose a quiet, secluded place, moderately humid and warm. Most often, the choice falls on dry, rotten trees or shrubs, and prepares a separate nest for itself.
Bees have strong jaws. With her powerful jaws, the female gnaws out multi-level, gentle tunnels in the pliable tree. By the way, it was for the ability to build such “multi-room apartments” that this shoulder was given the name “carpenter”.
The moves that the female makes in the wood are distinguished by perfectly smooth edges. To an inexperienced person, it may seem like the holes were made with a drill. During construction, the female makes loud crackling sounds, which can be used to determine her proximity.
When the nest is ready, the female carpenter bee prepares a special mixture of nectar and pollen. The female places a drop of this composition in the compartment, lays an egg in it and seals the hole-room. Each such partition is the floor for the next “room”. The length of each stroke can reach 20-30 centimeters.
In this way, the bee lays ten to twelve eggs, and then hermetically closes the entrance to the nest. The sealant is wood mixed with bee saliva. The nectar composition provides excellent nutrition for the larvae, which emerge around mid-June.
One drop prepared by the female is enough for the larva until the fall, when it turns into a strong young bee. It is worth noting that the development time of larvae is not always the same. The male larvae are the first to reach the required age. In the nest they are located closer to the exit. Thus, by the time the weather warms up, all the larvae become adults.
During the first time after laying eggs, the bee jealously guards its nest, and after a few weeks it leaves it forever. In the fall, young individuals appear in the clutch, which do not immediately leave their shelter, but remain in it until spring, gaining strength. With the arrival of warm days, young bees gnaw through the partitions and fly away.
As for the female, with the arrival of autumn she either dies or overwinters and resumes her life cycle in the next season. Interestingly, bees do not hibernate. They tightly close their homes from the inside and hibernate while awake. Their food during this period is honey and nectar collected during the active summer period. Carpenter bees also do not hibernate, like their relatives.
Interestingly, the nests created by females never remain empty. More and more bees are using them. One nest can be home to ten generations of carpenter bees and only be abandoned once the wood has deteriorated.
How to get rid of tree bees
Despite the fact that wood bees are not aggressive and are practically harmless to wooden buildings, their presence on the site is undesirable. The sting of a large black bee is dangerous to human health. Allergy sufferers and children may suffer the most from black bee venom. If the bite lands on the throat, without immediate medical attention, it can be fatal.
To avoid terrible consequences for the body, after a black bee sting, you should immediately remove the sting, squeeze out the poison, and treat the wound with alcohol.
The carpenter bee has become a very rare species, and is protected by the Red Data Book, so it cannot simply be destroyed. But it’s also not worth putting the health of your household at risk. Therefore, it is worth considering several options for dealing with unwanted neighbors.
Construction of traps
You can build bee traps yourself or buy special traps for flies, mosquitoes and midges. A commercial trap kills insects because it runs on electricity and the caught bee receives a fatal electric shock.
A self-made trap is a box assembled from coniferous wood boards with a hole in the floor for a bottle with a cut neck and several narrow holes to attract insects. The edges of the bottle are folded inside the box to ensure that woodworms get inside. The structure is strengthened with tape, and the bottle is filled with soapy water. For the trap to work, it must be placed near the bees' habitat, while avoiding the shadows. Carpenters prefer to settle in the sun. Such a trap will rid the area of carpenters in 2-3 weeks.
Application of pesticides
To get rid of pests forever, you can use special pesticides. But this method is only suitable if you are sure that the products will not harm the health of your household.
In this case, carbonyl or boric acid is used. There are also special powder pesticides.
Use of gasoline and diesel fuel
If you urgently need to act against bees and don’t have time to build traps or go shopping, then gasoline or diesel fuel can be a good help. Using them is quite simple: just fill the bee tunnels with them.
Using carburetor cleaner
Another effective remedy in the fight against hairy insects. Some aerosol carburetor cleaners can kill all bees inside the nest instantly, others will simply ruin the nests and the bees will not be able to return to the uninhabitable structure.
Loud noise and vibration
Loud noise and vibration scares away adults. A bee would prefer to build a new home in a quieter place than to live in the torment of noisy music or a working hammer drill. Therefore, if the area allows you to listen to loud music with low bass, then this method is worth trying. This is the most harmless method of dealing with uninvited guests.
Mechanical elimination method
The mechanical method of elimination involves catching the insect with your hands or improvised means. When using this method, you should follow safety rules and remember the possibility of being stung.
The easiest way to catch a tree bee is when it freezes in flight in one place.
All means are good in the fight against dangerous insects. Therefore, if you are “lucky enough” to find furry neighbors, immediately start fighting them.
