Honeybee vs. Carpenter Bee

Features

• Carpenter bees are yellow and black or bluish black, with shiny abdomens. The honeybee can be brown, black or brown and yellow, with sparse hairs on the abdomen.

Social/Solitary

• The honeybee works in a colony to take care of the young. The carpenter bee is a solitary bee.

Habitat

• The female carpenter bee has the ability to drill through wood and build a nest. A group of honeybees looks for a sheltered location such as a hollow tree to develop its colony.

Types of bees

• In a honeybee colony there is a queen, who makes the eggs; a sterile female worker bee, who takes care of the young; and a male drone, who fertilizes the queen.

  Because female carpenter bees take care of their own young, all adult females can reproduce.

Reproduction

• A new honeybee queen will mate with a number of drones before flight. She will establish her new colony with a group of worker bees.

  The adult female carpenter bee comes out of hibernation in spring to mate with the adult male. She then builds a nest in woody material to lay eggs.