https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/84511004 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/84521250
There was this Carpenter bee. For the first time I saw a Xylocopa bee land. AWESOME! I got those two observations this morning. It was fixated on that rung, occasionally taking refuge on a nearby one. But only in the late evening when I got it in a plastic bottle top half did it get scared enough to leave and never return. Why was it so fixated and so motionless yet perfectly capable of movement? No motions like egg laying or foraging were noticed.
this happened to me too in my xylocopa obs here. it was just sitting there on the stairs of my apartment garden i thought it was about to die at first but then my neighbour didn’t see it and was abt to stamp it. it flew away at the moment. there were some crematogaster ants around it too which made me think it was dead (they were not on the bee just roaming around it). i find it super weird. usually these bees are very active and their buzz is super loud but idk wht happened to it at that moment.
If found it: he was the larger bee in a pair. He stood guard there (he returned and stayed there, going here and there but kept returning even to this day). One had made a hole in a nearby piece of wood.