One of the most annoying pests an old log home and wood barn has, is the carpenter bee. This fat dumb looking bee can easily be confused with the fuzzy bumble bee. The biggest differences between the bumble bee and the carpenter bee are their butts. Bumbles have fuzzy butts and carpenters have shiny ones. Bumbles also happily buzz around flowers and just look like they are having a great time. Carpenters are territorial and will hover in one spot and attack any insect that enters its territory. Thankfully, for as hostile as the carpenter bees are to other insects they really could care less about people or livestock.
Why are carpenter bees so bad? They destroy wood! The little buggers drill perfect little round holes in any solid wood, be it beams in the barn or logs in our home. At night I can actually hear them chewing away in the logs making new tunnels, drives me nutty! We’ve been fighting the carpenter bee battle with toxins which works amazingly well but has one big flaw; you have to find the hole! Sometimes the hole they call home is out of reach or you just can’t seem to find it which does you no good to puff nasty killing powder into it.
My husband has been doing some research on killing these annoying pests and found a guy who makes a carpenter bee trap. To be honest I thought the whole idea sounded silly especially after seeing the trap. They look like little bird houses with plastic bottles screwed into them.
The wood house has several holes drilled into it the same size as the average carpenter bee hole. As I had said, these bees are territorial and will fight one another and try to overtake each other’s dwellings. It turns out that these bees quickly locate the bee trap holes and enter to investigate, they end up falling into the plastic bottle and because they are so big and dopy they can’t fly or craw out. Tada, they are trapped.
I really didn’t think they’d work but after just 15 minutes of the first trap being set out 2 of them found their way into the bottle. I’m an instant believer in these traps and set 3 other ones up in problem areas.
The creator of these traps can be found at http://www.carpenterbeesolutions.com/ He has many great videos and information about Carpenter Bees.