3:00 snapshot #959

[urbpan]

The carpenter bees are crazy the past several days! At the zoo and elsewhere (a friend in NYC posted to facebook about it) HUGE SCARY BEES are scaring the hell out of everyone. I knocked this one out of the air with my hat and then picked it up with my bare hand. Not to show off (well, probably a little to show off) but to demonstrate that these are not dangerous insects. It's kind of hilarious how easily tricked we are, humans--the sapient primates, by an animal with a nervous system made of a few clusters of ganglia. Sure, the bees seem really menacing, darting suddenly at your face, buzzing loudly. But the most aggressive carpenter bees are the males--you can see this one is a male by the white square on his face. Why does that matter? Because male bees can't sting. They don't even have stingers. A male carpenter bee flying at a human's face is like a naked unarmed human charging at a tank--except that the tank is scared of insects and ducks squealing. The females can sting, but they are not very aggressive and rarely do.

Comments

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Carpenter bees keep chewing holes in my house to lay eggs. I am not amused. I wish they would use trees instead.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Carpenter bees seem to need bare wood to chew through. We've provided a great deal of it with our houses. Before houses they must have had to depend on dead trees from which the bark had fallen, or trees damaged in storms.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

I have these buzzing all around my cherry tree flowers. I don't bug them, they don't bug me. I'm not one to go all screamy whenever I see a bug or spider or a rat. BIG things scare me much more than little things. Big fast things with teeth -- lions/tigers, alligators -- those I'll beat a hasty retreat for.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

You mean the bee doesn't report back to the hive, "That's the guy! That's the one who killed Johnson! Let's get him! Charge!!!!" ?

Wow

[greenmonk (from livejournal.com)]

I learned something new about carpenter bees! Thank you for sharing this!

[wandererrob.livejournal.com]

We had them in our shed walls a couple years ago. They remind me of my dog, Zephyr. They put on a great show of looking and sounding intimidating, but in reality they're quite harmless.

When the young'ns hatched, it looked like the shed had been hit with buckshot. That took a bit of wood putty to fix. :)

HUGE SCARY BEES

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

We had a lot of those carpenter bees buzzing around here in Georgia about a month ago. They scared my toddler -- he didn't want to go walking in the woods anymore. I wasn't worried, but I'm glad to know that the obvious ones don't sting. I noticed them move aggressively at each other (can you call it a dogfight if the participants are insects?), but they didn't seem to touch each other. When fighting, do they ever make physical contact?

They seem to have gone away now; I guess they're following their favorite temperature up north, or maybe the flowers? The weather here has actually been cooler during the past week than it was a month ago.

Oh -- they liked to hang out on our screened porch, and I took a couple pictures. I'll try to post them later.

Re: HUGE SCARY BEES

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I admit I don't know too much about these creatures (or even if there is someone who does) but I'd guess that the females down your way are busily laying eggs in their tunnels while the males have fulfilled their purpose (dogfighting, then mating) and are dead.

[okaree.livejournal.com]

I know they don't sting, but I still can't bring myself to hold them that way, because BEE.

[flyingwolf.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that. I remember them eating our porch when I was growing up and I wasn't afraid of them - not like we were of wasps. But I didn't know male carpenter bees didn't sting... not that I'd be able to tell the difference.