Carpenter Bees

Boring into pressure treated lumber!!! This hasn't happened to me before. They are boring into the 2x4s and 2x6s I used to build a roof over my grill area. It has been up of 4 years and they have not been able to attack it previously. Top quality lumber from Lowes of course. Any ideas on how to treat it to stop them? BTW they are not getting into 4x4s or 5/4 decking board, only the 2x stock.

Tennis racket and kids works around here.

" Sevin" dust into the bore holes.No more bees.

Last summer I painted mine. They are appearing so will see how it goes.

Permethrin works but need to treat yearly. It also works on the red wasps as well. Not as much fun as shooting them with my 45 using home brewed # 12 shot shells.

Same here drifter. .22lr bird shot.

I was going to say build a bee trap, but this is ingenious.

pack the hole with Seven and peanut butter blend.

I plug the holes with a chunk of dowel. The end grain seems to be too hard for them to bore through. 3/8 dowel if I remember right. It deters them for a while.

bee traps work

I have never seen a carpenter bee.

Flyswatter.
They very rarely sting , so it is safe.

Little kids plastic bat did a lot of them in when my son was little. Tennis racquet is a high success tool.

If you can catch one with chopsticks you are the king

I waited for a dry spell and then soaked the wood with a solution of permethrin. I built my chicken run out of poplar that I milled myself. And it seemed to be like candy for those guys. Since that soaking I find the odd carpenter bee dead on the ground and some scratches where they tried to make a hole.

They are the ones which wear the big leather tool belt and charge too much, but no one can drill a cleaner 3/8" hole like they can.

Today's pressure treat ain't the old pressure treat. The old stuff used arsenic compounds to combat insects, which is why we no longer have it. The new uses copper compounds which is mainly anti fungal.

Long pole, pool cleaning net. Scoop em out the air, turn net upside down toward the ground. Then step on them while they're in the net

Paint the wood. They only go for raw wood surfaces. Then get a can of carpenter bee spray from your big box store, stick the tube up in the hole and foam it up. When it drys then get a tube of some kine of caulk and squirt it in the hole to seal it off.

When you paint treated wood it take something like Kills for it to stick to the wood and the green crap not to bleed through. Ask the paint dept at your big box what to use to paint treated wood.

Trapdog1 they look like bumblebees but fly faster

You can purchase insecticide paint additives. Basically permethrin formulated to mix well with paint.

I got the same thing happening. They are boring into pressure treated wood. They are swarming out of my neighbor's attic. I told them about it last year but they haven't done anything about it. Can only imagine what their rafters look like.

I got rid of the ones boring into my treated wood with foaming bee spray, but I have also used Seven Dust in the past to get rid of wasp nests, so I'm sure that works great too.

Seems like there was a thread on this last year with some home made traps just for these guys. I have them terrible this year. They aren't aggressive but they sure are hard on decks.

They are real bad this year in the shed where I park my trapping vechile. Read about this. Tie a bundle of shopping bags to rafters. Carpenter bees think that it is large wasp or hornet nests, and stay away. Only had this up about 2 weeks, but I don't think there are as many shavings on my vechile, and I haven't heard the buzzing.

X3 on 22 bird/rat shot. A lot of fun. Put some sunglasses on and let her rip.

This trap has been out about a week.. Seems to bee working.
Ol dad

I’m getting ready to make me a bunch of them ol dad.

ol dad, I like your trap, will be making some.

That's what I was looking for. Any details on making one?

You can look up designs on the web Page. The ones I will be building are designed slightly different than the one ol dad has. My wife has a good collection of peanut jars with the labels cleaned off that I will be using for the bottom part.

I have read where spraying wd-40 inside the holes works.