If necessary, consider placing carpenter bee traps near their nests. Treat or paint any exposed wood on your home. Remove any untreated wood and brush from your property. Store-bought and DIY pest control can effectively kill carpenter bees and other unwanted flying pests, but prevention and humane removal of bees and bees’ nests helps protect the local food chain and the environment. However, the threat of property damage or painful stings make them unwelcome neighbors to most. The resulting holes can be the same size as carpenter bees’ holes or as large as two inches in diameter, causing additional and possibly more significant structural damage.Ī bee infestation can be tricky to deal with: these pollinators are invaluable to a healthy ecosystem. Woodpeckers drill for wood-boring insects like carpenter bees and their larvae. Once a wooden structure is riddled with visible carpenter bee nests, predators are sure to follow. Unlike termites and carpenter ants, carpenter bees will not colonize the bare wood and live inside the holes long after larvae reach maturity, but these holes can gradually degrade the structural integrity of a home if the bees are left unchecked. Female carpenter bees are the homemakers of the species, and will begin building a nest as soon as they wake from hibernation and find a mate in the spring.īecause the female bees prefer to build nests in semi-protected softwood, they often gravitate toward wooden structures like homes and barns and bore holes under roofs and eaves to prevent wind and rain from entering their nests. If you find round holes in old softwood or untreated wood on your property, you likely have a carpenter bee infestation.Ĭarpenter bees don’t build hives in the traditional sense - they are solitary insects who, at most, live in small familial groups, often consisting of several generations of females. Carpenter bees will bore holes into untreated wood to lay eggs and hide their larvae from predators. If you see carpenter bees visiting your home, check the exterior of the building for signs of a carpenter bee problem. Carpenter bees do eat flower nectar and pollen like other bees, but you will see them frequently visit wood on and around your home, including wood stumps, deck boards, eaves, and other wooden structures. Whereas bumblebees are valuable pollinators who bumble from flower to flower, carpenter bees tend to hover around and land on untreated wood. The best way to identify carpenter bees is through their behavior. Despite being similar in size and appearance to bumblebees, carpenter bees can be identified by their black abdomen and yellow thorax, whereas bumblebees have tufts of yellow hairs all over. Carpenter bees’ size distinguishes them from most bee and wasp varieties we see in the United States, including honey bees, sweat bees, wasps, hornets, and more.
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