The Valley Carpenter Bee can be alarming when you first see it. They’re large as bees go, their whole genus is, roughly a third the length of a humming bird. Bulky, inch-long, metallic black females hum like conspiracy-theory black helicopters from flower to flower. The rarely-seen males are golden and fuzzy with gold-green eyes. The Valley Carpenters are the largest bees in California. Usually referred to as “black bumblebees”, they’re actually distant cousins to bumblebees just like honey bees.
Ian