Carpenter Bees and Nicotiana

By Guest Blogger - TheJenny

Bees have become frequent visitors to our yard ever since we eliminated our lawns 2 years ago in favor of more interesting and diverse plantings. My favorite buzzy visitors are the enormous carpenter bees. For the longest time I was erroneously referring to them as bumble bees. After a tiny bit of internet research, I discovered bumbles are covered in body fuzz. My bees are not so fuzzy. Just huge (nearly the size of a silver dollar coin), and shiny black. Their favorite nectar in our yard is that of the ornamental nicotiana that springs out of the ground every summer under the pine tree in the backyard. They spend hours hovering around the violently bright fuchsia-colored blossoms. It's quite nice to sit and watch (although not too closely). But carpenter bees rock. They're solitary critters that defy gravity and I like the way they shimmy around doing their business with the nicotiana flowers.

My parents have always had gorgeous landscaping wherever they've lived. And I share my mom's enthusiasm for having plants everywhere. But the plantings of my youth lacked bees, and any plants that were deemed "messy." So having my own space to experiment with has been an nice adventure. Our front and back yards are quite small yet we've been able to attract a wide variety of different insects and even the random hummingbird with our plant choices. Bees, butterflies, moths, mantises, ladybugs, aphids (boo), scale (double boo), and so many more. I could certainly do without the leaf-eating grubs at times, but it gives my Bob something to tease me about.