Carpenter bees are buzzing us now

The carpenter bee (Above) and the bumble bee (Right) have similarities and are often confused with one another.

Last summer Entomologist Ron Box wrote an article about carpenter bees, and since they are thick right now, we are reprinting part of the article. Box and his wife have a new house in Upper Hightower and were being infested with carpenter bees along with everyone else.

"Carpenter bees were eating small dime size holes into the fascia and other areas of my wood home. I took some "Bam" grill cleaner (nothing more than a strong soap solution) and squirted one that was attacking my porch, dropping the robust female in her tracks, and soon death overtook her.

Since I am an entomologist, I know a bit about carpenter bees. They come in two different sizes, Large belonging to the Genus Xylocopa and Small belong to the Genus ceratina. The large carpenter bees are 20 mm in length (more like a bumble bee) and the smaller is less than 8 mm in size.

Carpenter bees are solitary, not social insects like honey bees or wasps, so this makes them not as aggressive because there is no single queen to protect. However mating time is a different story. The males possess no stinger, but are very territorial. They will hang around areas where the female is excavating tunnels and if you come near they will feign attack. The female on the other hand, does have a stinger and can produce a very painful sting if confronted, but normally she is very docile.

Now as for this tunneling, this may start with new fresh tunnels or, for saving time and energy, the female may reuse existing tunnels and clean them out and extend their length. New tunnels may extend 12", but older tunnels may extend several feet.

Books will tell you that a fresh coat of paint is the long term cure. It seems as though stains and preservative type paints are not as deterring as latex or enamel type paint. Keep this in mind the next time you are painting.

Carpenter bees don't consume the wood, but rather, just hollow it out for the egg laying and over wintering. Now this is amazing and why I love nature. For each tunnel she creates she collects a pollen ball and carries it back and lays an egg on it. This serves as food for the larvae to feed on as they develop. She repeats this process and seals each cell as she goes, which takes some time to complete.

So which egg and pollen ball develops first??? You would think the first laid, but if that were true then it would have to eat its way through its brothers and sisters to escape the tunnel! Mother nature sees to it that the last egg laid is the first to hatch, sort of reverse gestation.

Treating for these bees should consist of using a dust material [Sevenfi] directed into the tunnel and leaving the hole open for a few days allowing time for the female to contact the dust and die. Then sealing the hole with a wooden dowel and carpenter glue or wood putty. Spraying the surface of the wood with an insecticide will only give you a few weeks of deterrence, but its better than nothing until you can paint.

Now this is interesting-sometimes you will see staining on the side of buildings where there is carpenter bee activity. This is a result of bees defecating and may also have some type of pheromone association.

Now you know about carpenter bees."