Q - It's spring and it seems like we have a bumper crop of
carpenter bees. What is the best way to
get rid of them?
Hal in Douglasville
A - Hal, this is one of the best and funnest, (that's a word in my
dictionary), home pest control things that there is. It's even more fun that pulling the wings off
house flies.
The recommended instrument of
destruction for these bees is a badminton racquet.
No, really.
Get a badminton racquet or a whiffle
ball bat and start pinging the little sons of bees into oblivion.
Do not try to squirt them with
bee/wasp poison as you will quickly run out of the highly charged spray without
much success. Unless you totally suck at
badminton, your badminton racquet swing to kill ratio will be approximately 1
to 1.
The only thing you really must do is to kill the eggs the female
has laid and repair the holes.
You can repair the perfectly
round holes the bees make in your siding or your decking by squirting some
poison in the hole then filling it with a wood filler or putty (make sure you
use a paintable kind if you plan on painting).
The important part of that last sentence is squirting poison into the
hole. Not doing so will allow the bee to
hatch and they will, most likely, drill their way back out.
Contrary to popular belief there
is nothing that you can put into your paint to ward the bees off for any
extended period of time. Your only real
defense to keep them away is two remove the wood that they are enjoying which
would mean re-siding your home.
One more note. Not all carpenter bees, Xylocopa virginica,
sting. It's only the females (insert
joke here). In fact, male carpenter bees
can be captured by hand (if you really want to impress your friends) without
fear of stinging (they have no stinger).
To be fair, the female carpenter
bee is not really interested in stinging you either. They just want to drill their holes and lay
their eggs.