51 
Identity of the Hawaiian Carpenter Bee of the Genus 
Xylocopa (Hymenoptera). 
BY P. H. TIMBERLAKE. 
(Presented at the meeting of January 6, 1921.) 
The Hawaiian carpenter bee has been established in the 
Islands for many years, and was first collected by Blackburn. 
F. Smith (Journ. Linn. Soc. London, 14, p. 684, 1879), and 
W. F. Kirby (Entom. Mo. Mag., 17, p. 86, 1880) both identi- 
fied the species as Xylocopa aeneipennis (De Geer), which is 
now commonly synonymized with X. brasilianorum (Linn.). 
This identification has been followed by most later writers, in- 
cluding Perkins (Fauna Hawaiiensis, I, p. 113, 1899) and 
Maid! (Ann. k. k. Naturh. Hofmus., 26, p. 307, 1912). 
In 1899, Alfken (Entom. Nachr., 25, pp. 317, 318) pointed 
out the differences between our insect and brasilianorum and 
identified it with X. chloroptera Lep. from China and the East 
Indies, but later retracted this determination, using the name 
brasianorum in 1903 (Zool. Jahrb., 19, p. 576). 
Our insect, however, is strictly identical with a species 
common in Southwestern United States, which was described as 
X. varipuncta by Patton in 1879 (Canad. Entom., 11, p. 60).* 
Females from Whittier, California, and Hawaiian specimens 
agree exactly even in the minutest details of puncturation. It 
is likely, therefore, that the species was introduced from Cali- 
fornia instead of from South America, as formerly supposed. 
Maidl also records (1. c., p. 264) a female brasilianorum from 
Japan, and it would be interesting to know whether this is also 
varipuncta. 
Proe. Haw. Ent. Soe., V, No. 1, Oetober, 1922. 
* Since this note was presented, Dr. T. D. A. Cockerell has examined 
Hawaiian specimens and pronounces them to be exactly varipuncta, which 
he considers to be distinet from brasilianorum. Mr. S. A. Rohwer has 
also kindly compared specimens with others in the U. S. National Museum 
from Arizona, and finds them to be identical. 
