CARPENTER BEES AND CABBAGE WHITES

     The adaptable and abundant carpenter bees and cabbage white butterflies are two of the first insects visible on lawns and fields on warm afternoons in April in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They had overwintered in the protective ground and emerged as adult insects in the first real warmth of spring.  And both these common insects are well-adapted to human-made habitats.   

     Some years ago, we had an old wooden railing around our front porch.  Some of the wood was rotting and soft, a perfect place for fertile female carpenter bees to raise young.  A half dozen females chewed round holes a few inches deep under the railing for nurseries, until we removed it.     

     And during April, I've seen scores of female carpenter bees around barns and covered bridges where they look for places of softer wood to chew upward from below to keep out rain.  When each hole is completed, each female carpenter bee puts a small wad of flower nectar and pollen in the back of it, lays an egg on that food and seals it off with sawdust.  She does that a couple more times in that burrow, working toward the entrance.  And she creates at least a few hollows in soft wood where she repeats her reproductive process. 

     Each larva hatches, eats its stored food, pupates and emerges as an adult male or female bee that mates late in summer.  But only fertilized females winter in the soil until emerging next April ready to lay eggs in the wooden tunnels they create. 

     Adult cabbage white butterflies emerge from various sheltered places during warm days in April.  They wintered as pupae until the sun's warming rays stirred them to complete their metamorphosis to butterflies.  They sip the nectar of various flower species.  

     Female cabbage whites lay their yellow eggs on the underside of the leaves of plants in the mustard family, including on cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli.  The green caterpillars stay under their hosts' foliage to hide from predators as they eagerly consume those same leaves.  There can be a few broods of cabbage whites here, making these butterflies abundant by the end of each summer.  They appear to be everywhere.

     Cabbage white butterflies are plain white with a few black dots on their wings.  They are originally from eastern Europe, but they are another life form with its own interesting characteristics.   

     Carpenter bees and cabbage white butterflies are common and adaptable on our lawns and fields, both human-made habitats.  And they take advantage of our workings, including wooden structures as nurseries and cabbage and related plants as food sources.  Both these insects seem to have a bright future.     

            

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