Big Booty

These fat-momma’s work the neighbor’s trumpet vine. You can see pollen caked on her back from visiting multiple flowers. Carpenter bees are solitary (no colony, no hive, no caste, only a solitary nest per female), so she’ll use that pollen to provision a cell that will contain a single egg. After provisioning the cell and laying the egg, she’ll seal up the cell and build another. The young larvae will eat the provisions, pupate into adult form, then chew their way out of the cell.