Southern carpenter bee
The southern carpenter bee is a big shiny black bee that glints blue or green in the sun. It is called a carpenter because the mother digs tunnels in wood for her nest. Males have bright yellow hair on their backs.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Southern carpenter bee compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother chews a tunnel about 12 centimetres long in dead wood, with little rooms for her eggs.
Unlike some cousins, it does not dig into the wood of houses.
Males guard a territory and chase other males away in swirling air races.
It lives alone, not in a big colony like honey bees.
It grows from egg to adult in about seven weeks.
Most asked questions about Southern carpenter bee
?How big is the southern carpenter bee?
About 1.5 to 1.9 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Xylocopa micans
- Named by
- Lepeletier, 1841
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Xylocopa micans (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Bob Peterson from North Palm Beach, Florida, Planet Earth!. CC BY-SA 2.0, 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.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Western honey bee
Buff-tailed bumblebee
Violet carpenter bee
Giant honey bee
Wallace's giant bee
Himalayan giant honey bee
Hornet moth
Cloudless sulphur
Two-lined spittlebug
Two-spotted cricket
Small blue
Surinam cockroach_%E2%99%80_(7995162522).jpg){kind=link}