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Ceratina
Small carpenter bee on a lemon leaf. I do not know the specific Ceratina species.
Suburban house garden.
The cosmopolitan bee genus Ceratina, often referred to as small carpenter bees, is the sole lineage of the tribe Ceratinini, and closely related to the more familiar carpenter bees. They make nests in dead wood, stems, or pith, and while many are solitary, a number are subsocial, with mothers caring for their larvae, and in a few cases where multiple females are found in a single nest, daughters or sisters may form very small, weakly eusocial colonies (where one bee forages and the other remains in the nest and lays eggs). Wikipedia
Spotted on Apr 7, 2012
Submitted on Apr 8, 2012
6 Comments
You're welcome Emma!
Thanks Misako. The one which I had identified as Eastern Carpenter bee was later identified as yellow faced bee. But I recently learnt that Male Carpenter bees can have yellow faces.So still need to figure out some more.
Though the information you provided was awesome and it helped me a lot/ Thank you so much.
Emma: It looks like there are 500 species of carpenter bee in 31 subgenera. The only species I have seen are: California Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa californica), Small Carpenter Bee (Ceratine sp), and Arizona Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa californica arizonensis). All of these are black. It looks like the one you are referring to is a Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_car...
"The carpenter bee has a fuzzy yellow thorax and a shiny black abdomen."
according to this link and some others.
http://www.lsuagcenter.com/NR/rdonlyres/...
Misako, i am just trying to clear the confusion for myself more than anything else!!
Emma, I am not familiar with the one with the yellow thorax. I have only spotted one of the large black carpenter bees and several of the small carpenter bees.
So Misako,there are two types of carpenter bees? One which has a yellow thorax and the other which is fully black?
http://www.carpenterbees.org/209/what-ar...