What is the best bait to trap carpenter bees?

Freshly cut lumber

Paint the wood they are boring into and hanging a Walmart/plastic grocery bags stuffed with others(supposedly they think it is a hornet nest). That's what worked for me.

You can find plans online for carpenter bee traps made out of a mason jar and blocks of drilled wood. They just catch females.

A little Sevin Dust sprayed in their holes with a chalk bottle, will eradicate the females and young.

Keith

I make my own traps out of scrap pieces of ash that were milled for table legs but checked too bad to use.

They work pretty well, especially if you can get a freshly killed carpenter bee and put in the peanut jar base. That seems to attract more bees.

I’ve noticed that location is extremely important. I have one hanging on each corner of the chicken coop on the same side about seven feet apart. Every spring one of them gets filled with bees, and the other one gets next to nothing.

I keep six or eight of them hanging around the various outbuildings on the property.

Al, stop by my tailgating spot at the NYSTA convention and I will give you a trap.

Yep those traps work great.

Permethrin works here. I spray my log home wait a week and do it again