AROUND HOME : Notes on Beads and Bees : Carpenter Bees

ONE OF THE MOST rousing experiences you can have is to see--rocketing toward your face with the loudest, almost-vibrating sort of buzz--a black thing the size of a golf ball. Somewhere in an eternal, stop-action moment, you realize that the object is a bee, but not an ordinary bee, an enormous, black bee. Actually, it’s a carpenter bee--at 2 inches long the largest species of bee in California. But despite its aggressive fly-by, the carpenter bee has not come to claim you as its victim. It’s probably checking you out as a possible nesting site. Charles Hogue, curator of entomology at the County Museum of Natural History, says he suspects that human eye sockets appear to be holes in a pole to the bee’s insectile vision.

Unlike the honeybee, the carpenter bee does not make beeswax; nor does it fabricate honeycomb. Instead, it digs a nest in solid wood. Its scientific name, Xylocopa , means wood cutter . So, picking a telephone pole, say, or some choice timbers in the home of a human, the female chews inward a distance of six inches or more (depending on how tough the wood is), then lays an egg. The bee then provides the nest with enough pollen for the egg’s occupant and seals it off. She repeats this procedure up to 10 times before searching for place to dig another nest.

As for the sting of this giant carpenter bee, relax. Roy Snelling, another entomologist at the County Museum, reports that this bee’s stinger has atrophied into negligibility. He has handled carpenter bees many times, and although they have tried to sting him, they could not penetrate his skin.