Carpenter bees (Xylocopa) are named for their habit of excavating holes in wood, to use as nest chambers. Each nesting hole is packed with pollen and nectar and a single egg, and then sealed.
The larvae feed on the stored food, then pupate over the winter and emerge in the spring. Over time, carpenter bee tunnels can cause significant structural damage to your home and other buildings.
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Carpenter Bees
While it may look like bees are eating wood, they are actually carpenter bees tunneling into softwoods to create a nest. This is how they lay their eggs and raise their young.
Female carpenter bees use their strong jaws to bore a clean-cut hole in the surface of softwood, such as shingles, siding, decks, doors, sills, and fence posts. The hole is about the size of your little finger and is perfectly round.
Inside the hole, a female carpenter bee builds a tunnel about 1 to 4 feet long. The bee begins by boring a little more than a half-inch into the wood, then makes a sharp 90-degree turn and starts tunneling parallel to the grain of the wood.
The tunnel ends in a nest cavity filled with pollen and nectar. The female then lays a single egg on the food mass, and seals it with a mixture of saliva and wood pulp. She repeats this process until she has built a line of brood cells, each one about an inch long, with a single egg.
Mining Bees
Mining bees are a type of bee that build their nests in a series of underground tunnels. They are not colony forming bees like honey bees or paper wasps and live a solitary life.
Females construct the nest by excavating a main burrow with their fore legs and pushing soil upward from it. From this burrow, lateral shafts are created that branch into small chambers where pollen and other supplies are stored for her larvae to develop.
In spring, females are active and busy, gathering pollen from various plants for her brood to feed on. Several species are generalists and can be found in lawns and flowerbeds.
Many people are alarmed by the presence of mining bees, but they are docile and rarely sting humans. Their stings are only small and do not cause much pain. They only sting when they are defending their eggs.
Mason Bees
Mason bees are generalists that collect pollen and nectar from a wide variety of flowers, including fruit trees like cherry, apple, and pear. This is the reason they are excellent early spring pollinators of fruit and flowering plants.
However, mason bees can also be harmful to garden plants, especially if they are not monitored carefully and if pesticides are used to treat the garden. They are known to eat the inner circle of plant leaves, which can cause the plants to stop growing and eventually die.
If you have mason bees in your garden, the best way to keep them from harming your crops is to provide them with fresh housing each year. This includes replacing soiled or rotting nesting materials.
Wasps
A variety of wasps, including dark paper wasps and European hornets, eat wood. It’s a natural part of their diet, as it helps them produce cellulose, a fibrous material that makes wood sturdier and stronger.
In addition to eating wood, wasps can also chew through a variety of other materials. For example, they can gnaw through thin-grade plastics such as plastic bags, but they’re less likely to do so with thicker types of plastics, such as furniture or bottles.
In fact, they’ll even chew through soft metal such as lead or silver, according to Ms Bungay. A wood wasp can create an exit hole in as little as 6-7 mm of seasoned wood.
