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Sticker of White-cheeked carpenter
Bug card No. 4749 of 4,939

White-cheeked carpenter

Xylocopa aestuans
Eats: Nectar and pollenBees and bumblebeesRainforests and jungles6 legs

The white-cheeked carpenter is a big carpenter bee from Southeast Asia. It is more than 2 centimetres long. Carpenter bees chew tunnels into wood to make their nests.

Lives in
Southeast Asia
Length
2 cm (0.79 in)
more than
Top speed
about 28 km/h (17 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Can sting

Watch out! Read about its close cousin on Venom Wiki →

What does it eat?
Like other bees, it drinks nectar and collects pollen from flowers.
For real!Photo of White-cheeked carpenter
Picture by Basile Morin. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

White-cheeked carpenter about 2 cm long (0.79 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 3 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 14 secondsmoves 390 times its own body length every second

How big is White-cheeked carpenter compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is a large bee, bigger than a honeybee.

2

Carpenter bees make their nests by chewing tunnels into wood.

3

Scientists once thought a similar African bee was just another kind of this one, but they are now seen as different species.

you asked

Most asked questions about White-cheeked carpenter

?How big is the white-cheeked carpenter bee?

More than 2 centimetres long, a big bee.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Xylocopa aestuans
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Apidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
Lives on
Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Xylocopa aestuans (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Basile Morin. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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