more roommates

I have a small back porch, just big enough for a couple of chairs and a small table. That’s where I have my morning coffee and observe the goings on at the creek. Living in the county has introduced me to previously unobserved critters. One of them is the carpenter bee.

They’re those big, fuzzy black, slow-moving insects I’ve always called B-52s. They tend to startle you but rarely act aggressively. Since moving here a year ago, I’ve been able to watch them through their yearly cycle. What alerted me to them was the appearance of sawdust on the porch floor and circular holes in the rafters.

Xylocopa virginica is yet another roommate. The Ohio State website tells me that carpenter bees are solitary, overwinter as adults within their old nest gallery, and emerge in April or early May to mate. The females prepare the nest, excavating an entrance hole slightly less than a half inch wide. She’ll bore a couple of inches perpendicular to the grain, then make a 90 degree turn and bore out four to six inches to crate a gallery for her offspring. She puts a food ball, a mixture of pollen and regurgitated nectar, in the end of the tunnel, lays an egg on it, then walls off the brood cell with a plug of chewed wood pulp. She repeats the process six to ten times and dies soon after. The babies stay in their brood cells, going through the entire life cycle (egg, larva, pupa, adult) for about seven weeks, then chew their way out. They use their birth nest to hibernate through the winter.

Carpenter bees like wood, particularly weathered wood, unpainted. My house has aluminum siding, but the underside of the porch roof is unpainted wood. There are places where holes have been plugged, with putty and duct tape. I’ve added some duct tape patches, myself. But this fall, when the temperature has fallen enough to make the bees less active, I’ll plug the holes (the ones I can see, anyway) and paint. They don’t seem to like painted wood.

I’d really prefer to choose my roommates!