Over half of the pollinators visiting our peach tree were miniscule and flighty, hard to catch a glimpse of let alone capture on film.  I did manage to snag a photo of this Small Carpenter Bee (Ceratina sp.), which might be better named Teeny-tiny Carpenter Bee.  Small Carpenter Bees are sometimes confused with sweat bees, but the carpenter bees have a club-shaped abdomen, a dull metallic color (versus the brilliant color of some sweat bees), inconspicuous hair, and a pale yellow patch on the face.

Small Carpenter Bees (Ceratina sp.) are related to the larger carpenter bees that drill holes in your porch and weaken the integrity of the wood, but their life cycle is a bit different.  Ceratina bees are much more likely to be found in wild areas, where they nest in the pith of broken plant stems.  We have all five of their favorite nesting species on our farm --- elderberry, box elder, sumac, blackberry, and sunflower --- and I have a sneaking suspicion the bees might also use the large, woody stems of wingstem which are so prevalent in our floodplain.

Small Carpenter Bees make good pollinators because they can be quite numerous and aren't picky about the flowers they visit.  To encourage them in your yard, leave some brushy, wild areas around for the bees to nest in, or plant sunflowers and leave the stems standing all winter.  You may be rewarded with a horde of tiny bees visiting your flowers in the spring.

This post is part of our Native Pollinators lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Native pollinators Sweat bees: Halictids Small carpenter bees: Ceratina sp. Miner bees: Andrena sp. Greater bee fly: Bombylius major

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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