Carpenter Bees
Xylocopa species
Color: Blue-black, green or purple metallic sheen on abdomen
Legs: Six
Shape: Oval; bee shape
Size: 1
Antennae: Yes
Flight: Yes
Carpenter bees look like typical bumblebees but often lack yellow stripes. They are solitary bees.
Habits
Unlike bumble bees, carpenter bees are solitary insects. Female carpenter bees will chew a tunnel into a piece of wood to build a nest gallery. The bits of wood she chews and deposits outside the nest are called frass. The male carpenter bee guards the outside of the nest. He does not have a stinger, but his constant buzzing causes concern for some.
Habitat
Carpenter bees bore through soft woods to lay eggs and protect their larvae as they develop.
Threats
Carpenter bees do not pose a public health threat, but they can damage wood through their nest building.
Carpenter Bees can be found in All 50 States
Prevention:
Carpenter bees prefer bare wood, so painting and staining wood can sometimes deter them. However, they will sometimes attack stained or painted wood, so contact a pest control professional for assistance.

Bumble bees are beneficial insects because they pollinate crops and plants.
Subfamily bombinae; bombus species
Color: Black with yellow stripes
Legs: Six
Shape: Oval; bee shape
Size: 1"
Antennae: Yes
Flight: Yes
.Habits
The occupant of a disturbed bumble bee nest will buzz in a loud volume. They defend their nests aggressively.
Habitat
Bumble bees often nest in the ground, but can be found above ground around patio areas or decks. They will sometimes build their ness in soffits of attics.
Threats
As part of their aggressive defense of their nests, bumble bees will chase nest invaders for a considerable distance. The bumble bee sting is one of the most painful. Unlike honey bees, bumble bees can sting more than once.

Honeybees
Apis nekkufera Linnaeus
Color: Predominantly golden-yellow with brown bands
Legs: Six
Shape: Oval; bee shape
Size: 1/2
Antennae: Yes
Flight: Yes
Honey bees are social insects found all over the world. They are an extremely important beneficial insect because of their role in pollination. Honey bees pollinate more than 100 crops in the U.S.
Habits
Honeybees are active pollinators, and produce honey which feeds their young in colder months. The honeybee is the only social insect whose colony can survive many years.
Habitat
Honeybees produce honey from pollen and nectar of the plants they pollinate. They store the honey in honeycombs in their nests. They often build their nests in tree crevices, but will occasionally build nests in attics or chimneys.
Threats
Honeybees do sting, but they only sting once. The sting can be extremely painful if the stinger is not immediately removed from the sting. Persons allergic to insect stings will have a more severe reaction.

Honeybees can be found in All 50 States
Prevention:
Honeybees should be addressed by a professional. Removal of a honeybee nest and the honey product can be very messy. Because honeybee colonies are so large, only a pest control professional or experienced beekeeper can safely remove a honeybee nest.
Appreciation:
By Lynne Eley, Colorado Master GardenerSM, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, Denver
When you are feeling that the world around you is chaotic and unpredictable, it may help to think about the highly organized world of the honey bee.
Among the 10,000 species of bees identified, the honey bee is the only one that produces honey. Honeybees are social insects, living in colonies of up to 80,000 bees-- each with its own purpose.
What is life like for a honeybee? It depends upon what its status is when born. If it is a female, it will be most likely to become a worker. The life of the worker bee involves the making and maintenance of the nest. The youngest worker bees clean the empty cell and tend to the 'baby bees' or larvae. It is the worker bee you are most likely to encounter outside as it gathers nectar, pollen and water for the young in the hive. A bee will fly in random patterns to collect the nectar, but when it has all it can carry, the bee will make a 'beeline' for the nest.
The success of a beehive depends largely on the queen bee. For some unknown reason, worker bees will select only a few of the larvae to develop into queens. The selected larvae have special cells to grow in and are fed royal jelly. A queen will emerge from her cell in only 16 days after the egg has been laid.
She will eat honey to gain strength. If there is more than one queen in the nest the queen bees may fight until death or a queen may leave or 'swarm' from the nest with other workers to establish a new colony. A newly established queen bee flies out of the hive and will mate with one or several "drones." Most likely, this one mating event will allow her to lay eggs for the rest of her life. A queen bee may lay up to 2,000 eggs a day and up to 1,000,000 in her lifetime.
The "drones" are male bees that have developed from unfertilized eggs. They do no work and are stingless. Their only job is to mate with the queen. An unmated queen will lay drone eggs. She will only lay worker eggs if she is fertilized. In autumn, when the honey flow is over, so is the need for drones. The workers will allow the drones to starve to death when the egg laying season finishes, and they would eat too much of the stored honey if allowed to live over the winter.
The lives of bees are so fascinating that many people have glass-walled hives so that they can observe the industry and efficiency of a bee colony. We should all appreciate these marvelous insects!

Bees, Ants, Beetles, Termites: Are They Chewing Up Your Home?
They’re big and scary and look like bumble bees – inch-long carpenter bees with a shiny abdomen and yellow thorax. When humans approach, males may angrily hover a short distance in front of a person’s face or buzz around their head.
People stay clear of them. Most don’t know it’s only an act, flying around the nest playing guard. Nature has left this male ill-prepared: he has no stinger. Only the female can sting. It’s a potent sting but she rarely uses it.
For homeowners, a bigger but little-known danger lurks. Carpenter bees are wood-destroying insects that can cause serious structural damage if not caught in time and treated. Other pests that can eat through wood include: termites, carpenter ants, and powder post beetles.
If any of these organisms has established a nest in the wood of a structure, homeowners probably will need the services of pest management professionals to help determine and implement an effective plan to control them and prevent re-infestation. This is especially true if any form of chemical control is needed.
This plan is likely to be an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, according to Dr. Mark Lacey, Director of Technical and Field Services for the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), a trade group representing professional pest management companies in the U.S. and around the world.
IPM is a decision-making process that anticipates and prevents pest activity and infestation by combining several techniques or materials to achieve long-term management, such as structural repair, maintenance, biological and mechanical control techniques, and pesticide application.
Lacey said IPM differs from traditional pest management in that it employs an approach that requires more participation by the homeowner to achieve long-term pest management.
“Since their home’s likely their biggest investment in their lifetime, most homeowners are more than happy to take the time and effort needed to implement the pest management professional’s recommendations for an effective program,” he said.
Professional pest management can be important because the untrained eye often cannot see the structural damage caused by carpenter bees, carpenter ants, powder post beetles, or even the dreaded termites.
Everyone knows about the dangers of subterranean termites, which cost in excess of $2.5 billion in treatments and damages each year as they tunnel their way through structures. Damage to affected wood may be so great that the building may crumble or collapse entirely.
Not generally known is that there are seven species of carpenter bees throughout the U.S. They get their name from their ability to drill through wood and nest in near-perfect holes of about one-half inch in diameter. The hole is usually located on the underside of wood surfaces, including siding, soffits, decks, overhangs, fence posts and window frames. They tunnel aggressively in cedar siding.
Although the hole only appears to be only an inch or two deep, it rarely ends there. The female bee takes a right-angle turn and bores a gallery anywhere from four to six inches in a new gallery and up to 10 feet for galleries developed and used by several bees. This channel serves as a main corridor in which they usually wall-off smaller chambers a few inches long to hold their eggs and developing young.
Female carpenter bees will drill galleries in a wide array of woods, but prefer weathered and unpainted woods. Pressure treated lumber in decks won’t stop them.
Carpenter bee control consists of treating each individual gallery with an appropriately labeled pesticide. Aerosol injection systems are probably the most efficient, safest and quickest way to treat galleries, especially when on a ladder.
Similarly, carpenter ants get their name from hollowing out galleries in wood as nests. They can do serious damage to buildings when they cut extensive galleries in structural wood.
The first sign of an infestation may be seeing several sizes of worker ants crawling along a countertop, or small piles of ragged “saw dust” mixed with dirt particles, fragments of insulation, and insect body parts (frass). Each pile of frass is usually directly below a small hole in some wooden part of a cabinet, windowsill, or structural part of the building.
Worker ants push the debris out of their galleries through the small holes. Another common sign, most often seen in spring, is a swarm of winged reproductives emerging. These may fly to lights and may be confused with termites.
There are nine species of carpenter ants throughout the U.S., with as many as four or five species commonly seen in some places. All species mainly attack wood which is, or has previously been, wet and damaged by fungi.
Even though these ants first invade wet, decayed wood, they may soon begin expanding their smooth-walled galleries into sound wood. They usually come into buildings through cracks around doors, windows, or through exterior holes for plumbing, electric wires, TV cables, or phone lines. They will also crawl along overhead wires, shrubs, or tree limbs which touch the building far above the ground.
Carpenter ants can be hard to control. It usually requires a trained professional to detect the telltale signs of typical carpenter ant debris, gallery openings, foraging trails, or typical gallery cutting sounds. Just controlling the ants you see crossing the floor won’t help.
Then there are lyctids, commonly known as powderpost beetles because their larvae produce a very fine, powderlike dust (like talcum powder or flour) in their galleries. There are about 11 species in the U.S.
Besides piles of dust, another sign of damage and infestation are their round exit holes. Female lyctids lay their eggs in exposed wood pores, cracks or crevices. Lyctids attack the sapwood and only that of hardwoods, usually less than 10 years old.
They attack both lumber and manufactured products. Lyctids are usually brought into structures in wood which contains their eggs and/or larvae. This wood is typically infested during drying or storage. (Eggs are never deposited in or on waxed, painted, or varnished surfaces).
Lyctids usually attack oak, hickory, and ash, and will attack other native and tropical hardwoods. They also often attack bamboo.
For control, a local treatment or fumigation may be used depending on extent of infestation and the preferences of the homeowner.