Valley Carpenter Bees

I think that the internet is a wonderful thing. If you need information, it’s out there, somewhere. It may take a little persistence to find it, but it’s there.

We’ve had bees in the piece of driftwood I brought back from Oregon for about 5 years now. Every year sawdust piles up in drifts at the bottom of the stump and every year I think the thing must be hollow by now.

For the last couple of years there have been golden bees along with the black ones I’ve seen all my life. My husband and I wondered what the heck they were. A different species? Some sort of mutation. Turns out, all of the above. They’re boys!

Thanks to the UC Davis Department of Entomology for answering a long standing question.