
Somebody’s Been Eating My Carpet…. And There They Are!
April 11, 2016
Bed Bugs on the Grand Strand: 5 Tips To Avoid them
June 11, 2016Every spring love is in the air for the Carpenter Bees as they emerge out of their winter slumber. It’s an exciting time of life—it’s mating season.
Male bees will tussle with each other head butting and sometimes tumbling in air as they wrestle for dominance. The male of the species acts pretty tough often getting up close and personal with people. The truth is he’s not able to sting and is actually quite harmless. The female does have a stinger but once fertilized she is focused on nest building as she lays her eggs and supplies them with food.
It’s this nest building that can draw a lot of negative attention for the carpenter bee. Constructing a nest involves boring a hole into wood and often times that wood is part of someone’s home. Generations of bees can use the same tunnels year after year; this can lead to more extensive damage to the structure.
When the busy spring is over and summer comes to an end so ends the life of the adult carpenter bee. “What about the birds,” you ask? Some species of birds love to dine on the young bees, namely wood peckers. Birds will peck through the wood to get to the bee larvae and in the process make a real mess of the wooded members of a structure. If you didn’t notice the bee holes in the wood or the excrement and wood dust coming out of the holes in the spring you can’t miss the long channels of damage the birds will cause if they find out the bees are there.
The lucky bees that make it to adulthood in the fall will exit their nests in search of food as they prepare to overwinter back in the nest. You won’t see carpenter bee activity through the cold months of winter but at the first signs of spring we see this cycle continue.
It can be entertaining to watch these incredible insects live out their lives and they are beneficial to the environment as pollinators.
If you have an area that carpenter bees are trying to enter and you are concerned about possible damage The Pest Force can assist you in stopping that activity. For more information click here.
There are a variety of homemade traps available online for carpenter bees. I have included some pictures of a simple and inexpensive trap that you can make at home.
Items needed: Saw, Drill, Hammer, Tack nails, Fence Staples, Small galvanizes nails, Water Bottles
Start with a 1 foot long 2×4 and drill a half inch diameter hole into the bottom, then drill into the face making sure the two holes intersect making a 45% angle.
Use small tack nails to attach the water bottle lid to the hole at the bottom of the 2×4 and screw the bottle on. For a duel trap repeat the process at each end of the board.
Nail 2 fence staples into the top of the 2×4 at each end to use for hanging the trap.
I used 2 small galvanized nails to hang my trap on the structure.
Written by Matt McLaughlin, The Pest Force