Carpenter bee

“ In the East Indies there are several species of wood-cutter (Xylocopa) and carpenter bee (Xylocopa) , which confine their ravages to the wood after it has been felled. The wood-cutter tunnels through the beams and posts of buildings, which they frequent in great numbers. The passages are from 12 to 15 inches long, and more than half an inch in diameter. If the insects are numerous, their ravages are dangerously destructive, and they soon render beams unsafe for supporting the roof.
The carpenter bee of Southern Africa is one of those curious insects which construct a series of cells in wood. ”

“ At most, a few movements of the legs, a slight pulsation of the belly, continuing till the morrow, proclaim that life has not yet entirely departed. Then everything ceases: the Carpenter-bee is a corpse.
The importance of this experiment compels our attention. When stung in the neck, the powerful Bee dies on the spot; and the Spider has not to fear the dangers of a desperate struggle. Stung elsewhere, in the abdomen, the insect is capable, for nearly half an hour, of making use of its dart, its mandibles, its legs; and woe to the Lycosa whom the stiletto reaches. ”

“ The carpenter bee, with only the tools which nature has given her, cuts a round hole, the full diameter of her body, through thick boards, and so makes a tunnel by which she can have a safe retreat, in which to rear her young. ”

“ Usually, the same aperture is the entrance to two or three parallel corridors. With several galleries there is accommodation for the entire laying, though each gallery is quite short; and the Bee thus avoids those long series which always create difficulties when the moment of hatching arrives. The laggards and the insects eager to emerge are less likely to get in each other's way.
After obtaining the dwelling, the Carpenter-bee behaves like the Osmia who is in possession of a reed. Provisions are collected, the egg is laid and the chamber is walled in front with a saw-dust partition. ”

“ The violet carpenter-bee, as may be expected, occupies several weeks in these complicated labours; and during that period she is gradually depositing her eggs, each of which is successively to become a grub, a pupa, and a perfect bee. It is obvious, therefore, as she does not lay all her eggs in [60] the same place—as each is separated from the other by a laborious process—that the egg which is first laid will be the earliest hatched; and that the first perfect insect, being older than its fellows in the same tunnel, will strive to make its escape sooner, and so on of the rest. ”

“ The action is similar to that of a stingless, solitary carpenter bee, common in La Plata: a round burly insect with a shining steel-blue body: when the tree or bush in which this bee has its nest is approached by a man it darts about in an eccentric manner, humming loudly, and at intervals remains suspended motionless for ten or fifteen seconds at a height of seven or eight yards above his head ”

“ Solitary insects may exhibit a single trait of superiority, either in the catching of their prey, as the spider does; or in the securing of a well protected habitation, as is instanced by the carpenter bee, the mason bee, and some other lone and non-associating insects: but the history of those which unite in societies unfolds more of insect energy and talent. In large communities a combination of exertions is requisite, to procure supplies for the general weal; an intercourse of mutual intelligence is kept up; labour is regularly divided ”

“ The mason bee builds her nest in the hole of an old wall, of little pieces of clay. She makes four or five cells, of the size of a thimble, in each of which she lays an egg. The carpenter bee makes a nest in an old post, by boring a hole, twelve inches long, with her teeth. In these holes she lays her eggs.
We could tell some of Aunt Betsey’s curious stories about upholstery bees and leaf-cutter bees, and we could say a good deal about their spiteful cousins, the wasps and hornets. ”

“ The Bees who work hard to make their homes, such as the Mason-bee, who scrapes hard clay and makes a large cement mansion, the Carpenter-bee, who bores dead wood to a depth of nine inches, and the Anthophora, who digs corridors and cells in the banks hardened by the sun, have no time left to spend in furnishing their cells elaborately. ”

“ These partitions are constructed of the coarse dust or chippings made by the bee in eating out her cells, for our active little carpenter is provided with strong cutting jaws, moved by powerful muscles, and on her legs are stiff brushes of hair for cleaning out the tunnel as she descends into the heart of the solid wood. She must throw out the chips she bites off with her powerful mandibles from the sides of the burrow, by means of her hind legs, passing the load of chips backwards out of the cell with her fore limbs, which she uses as hands. ”

“ It bores through and enters the developing seed, where it undergoes a moult and becomes legless. Similarly the newly-hatched larva of an oil-beetle (Meloe) is an active little campodeiform insect, which, hatched from an egg laid among plants, waits to attach itself to a passing bee. Carried to the bee’s nest, it undergoes a moult, and becomes a fat-bodied grub, ready to lead a quiet life feeding on the bee’s rich food-stores.
Distribution and Habits.—The Coleoptera are almost world-wide in their distribution, being represented in the Arctic regions and on almost all oceanic islands. ”

“ Among the solitary bees are several British species, which come under that class called carpenter-bees by M. Réaumur, from the circumstance of their working in wood, as the mason-bees work in stone. We have frequently witnessed the operations of these ingenious little workers, who are particularly partial to posts, palings, and the wood-work of houses which has become soft by beginning to decay. Wood actually decayed, or affected by dry-rot, they seem to reject as unfit for their purposes ”

“ Let us speak now of eggs carefully deposited by other insects in galleries and excavations made into timber. The insects which thus act have been called by the fanciful title of carpenter-bees, in allusion to the drilling process by which they penetrate the wood. A highly interesting spectacle it is, in truth, to see one of these pigmy carpenters at her work, and, fortunately, some of the species are not very uncommon in our gardens. Spring is the season when she commences her labours. ”

“ Unless one has learned, or can learn, to drive a nail, one had best not undertake bee-keeping, for the bee-keeper must become a carpenter to be successful; it adds much to the interest of the occupation to make all sorts of things for one's own bees. The principle on which the super is built is that it may hold the sections tightly in place, and not allow them to drop through. Therefore, at the bottom of the super, along each narrower end, is a tin strip to support the ends of the section-holders ”

“ When the bodies of most of the bees forming the curtain have thus been adorned with ivory tablets, we shall suddenly see one of them detach herself from the crowd, and eagerly, hurriedly, clamber over the backs of the motionless crowd till she has reached the top of the dome. To this she will fix herself firmly, banging away with her head at those of her neighbors who seem to interfere with her movements. Then, she will seize with her mouth and her claws one of the scales that hang from her body, and set to work at it like a carpenter planing a soft piece of wood. ”

“ With no other tools than those which nature supplies, how cleverly do these creatures shape and mould their nests into the required form, using for their work a mortar carefully prepared by their own labour and skill, and just of the consistency required. Few, again, may have had an opportunity of seeing carpenter-bees boring holes in posts or palings, and forming their smoothly chiselled cells, or of inspecting the partitioned galleries dug out in old timber by carpenter-wasps ”

“ Fig. 18. Young Larva (FL) , Full-grown Larva (SL) and Pupa (N) of Hive-bee (Apis mellifica) . co, cocoon; sp, spiracles; ce, eye; an, feeler; m, mandible; l, labium. Magnified 4 times. After Cheshire, Bees.
Among those saw-flies whose larvae feed throughout life in a concealed situation, we find an interesting transition between the caterpillar and the legless grub. For example, the giant saw-flies (so called 'Wood-wasps') have larvae that burrow in timber, and these larvae possess relatively large heads, somewhat flattened bodies with pointed tail-end, and very greatly reduced legs. ”

“ These insects have developed an unerring instinct as to the proper point to perforate the corollas from the outside, in order to readily get at the nectar. The holes made by the humble bees and by the carpenter bees are usually quite different and easily distinguished.
The humble bees have short, stout, blunt jaws, ill adapted for cutting, and the perforations made by them are apparently always irregular in shape, and have jagged edges. ”

“ Of the insects directly attacking wood, the most important are the ambrosia or timber beetles, the borers, the ants, and the carpenter bees. The most remarkable feature of the beetle is the manner of its boring into the harder parts of the wood. Its jaws are particularly constructed for this work, being heavy and strong. The boring is done something after the manner of countersinking, and the jaws are believed to be self-sharpening, by reason of the peculiar right to left and left to right motion. ”

“ No doubt, in some of the recorded cases of perforations, carpenter bees have been mistaken for humble bees. The heads of all our Northern humble bees are rather narrow, retreating from the antennæ toward the sides, and with a more or less dense tuft of hair between the antennæ. The abdomen, as well as the thorax, is always quite densely covered with hair, which may be black or yellowish or in bands of either color. ”

“ The little triungulins escape on to the body of the bee or wasp; then those that are to survive must leave their host for a non-parasitized insect. Clinging to her hairs they are carried to the nest, where they bore into the body of a bee or wasp larva, and after a moult become soft-skinned legless maggots. ”

“ Among the wasps the workers may only differ from the queens in size, and individuals intermediate between the two forms of female may be met with. Further, the queen wasp, and also the queen humble-bee, commences unaided the work of building and founding a new nest, being afterwards helped by her daughters (the workers) when these have been developed. ”

“ In two of the families—the Mutillidae and Thynnidae—the females are wingless and the larvae live as parasites in the larvae of other insects; the female Mutilla enters bumble-bees’ nests and lays her eggs in the bee-grubs. In the other families both sexes are winged, and the instinct and industry of the females are among the most wonderful in the Hymenoptera. They make burrows wherein they place insects or spiders which they have caught and stung, laying their eggs beside the victim so that the young larvae find themselves in presence of an abundant and appropriate food-supply. ”

“ In the hive-bee and among ants, on the other hand, there are constant structural distinctions between queen and worker, and the function of the queen bee in a hive is confined to egg-laying, the labour of the community being entirely done by the workers. Many ants possess several different forms of worker, adapted for special duties. ”

“ Without leaving the house in which I live, I can enumerate stone, wood, glass, metal, paint and mortar as forming the foundation of the nests. The green-house with its furnace heat in the summer and its bright light, equalling that outside, is fairly well-frequented. The Mason-bee hardly ever fails to build there each year, in squads of a few dozen apiece, now on the glass panes, now on the iron bars of the framework. ”

“ The upholsterer stores honey and pollen that looks like rose-colored jam. I dare say it is very delicious. The mason bees take bits of chalk, sand, and woody material, which they make into tiny bricks to use in building their little houses. Another kind of bee hunts for an old snail shell in which to make her house. There is another variety that builds its nest in the heart of the scarlet poppy. Some bees throw out sweet perfume. Although most bees work in the sunshine, there is a class, with wings tinted like the rainbow, that works by moonlight. ”

“ From one and the same nest there come out several inhabitants, brothers and sisters, the males with a bright brick-red fleece, and the female of a splendid velvety black, with dark-violet wings. They are all the children of the Bee who built or repaired and furnished the cells. The male Bees lead a careless existence, never work, and do not return to the clay houses except for a brief moment to woo the ladies; they have nothing to do with the housekeeping or the new nests. What they want is the nectar in the flower-cups, not mortar to build with. ”

“ She will turn it, underground, into cotton satchels to hold the store of honey and the eggs. And here are the Leaf-cutting Bees, carrying their black, white, or blood-red reaping brushes under their bodies. They will visit the neighbouring shrubs, and there cut from the leaves oval pieces in which to wrap their harvest. Here too are the black, velvet-clad Mason-bees, who work with cement and gravel. We could easily find specimens of their masonry on the stones in the harmas. Next comes a kind of Wild Bee who stacks her cells in the winding staircase of an empty snail-shell ”