Why is the bee acting like this? (wing flapping)?

Question

It's mid-July in Ontario, Canada. Over the past two months (give or take a couple weeks), I have noticed a bee acting strangly on about six different occasions.

About the bee - I assume it is a type of "bumblebee". It is very large for a bee (maybe the biggest bee I've seen!), black and yellow, however it's perdominantly black, and very furry.

This bee will cling to the underside of an over-hanging roof on my shed. It will stand in one spot, always this same spot, and beat/flap it's wings constantly. I assume the rate of wing-flapping is very high. It makes quite a loud humming sound that can be heared probably 30' away (I live in the country). It keeps it up for quite a long time. I often get bored after 10-15 minutes and leave it to its own world.

I am really puzzled by this bee, as it's been doing the same thing, in the same spot, over quite a long time. I haventbeen checking in onit but since I have seen it somanytimes on random occasions Iassume itdoes this a lot

Answer 1

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Answer 2

It's probably a carpenter bee.  They're known to bore nests  into wood.  This might explain the sound you're hearing... Check out the wikipedia article for pictures and info.

Answer 3

It may be a hummingbird moth

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

Answer 4

Is it pretty cool when she is doing this?  Bumblebees will exercise their wings to raise their body temperature to where they can fly.

Answer 5

Since the bee can make various sounds by rapidly contracting its muscles it uses the sounds in many ways.

Here is a page done by a bee enthusiast who mentions annoyed bees buzzing to alert the nest. Also when handled to much in research.

http://www.bumblebee.org/foraging.htm

Queens interact with workers by humming and aggressive darting.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/f731...

Wing muscle humming is done by the bee rapidly flexing its flight muscles. They do this sitting still also. They can use it to warm flight muscles or to communicate with other bees.

http://zipcodezoo.com/Key/Bombus_Genus.a...

Sound generated by muscle contractions in the flight muscles. "bumblebees showed prolonged periods of sound generation" in experiments. This sound is used to dislodge pollen from certain types of flowers. They will also use sound and pheromones to stimulate other bees to go out and seek food.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/93178...

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/19...

http://www.springerlink.com/content/7aba...

Bees will react to disturbances from mice or other creatures by making a loud hissing vibration.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j4le...

Answer 6

Sounds like a wood boring bee, they can do a lot of damage too wooden eaves. Hate too say it but kill it  ( if you can , they are fast).  Agree with ReadingS  , meant to say carpenter bee.

Answer 7

afaik wasps do this - flapping wings with a distinctive hum when they're fanning the nest to cool it. perhaps your hornet had a hysterical pregnancy. :-)