I tried a search for capenter bees and came up with no matches. What have y'all had good luck with to get rid of these critters? Homebrew solutions would be best (I'm a tighwad.) This farm we bought has two barns spaced 6 feet apart, and built about 10 years apart. No bees at all in the older one, but holes everywhere in the rafters of the newer (built in '79) barn. The roof is gonna need painting, but I'm a little concerned about getting up there with all those holes under me. Perhaps the wife will take care of it for me, she ain't but about 117 # ::) ::)
Thanks,
Greg
A 12 gauge Shotgun works. Your shooting eye will improve, but it's awful expensive.
I've heard some of the members say that they use a tennis racquet. ;D
Some of the farmers around here will spray their wood (before building) with diesel. Many will spray their barn (after building) with diesel. Scary.
I guess the diesel leaves something on or in the wood that helps to repel. I wouldn't trust it. Paint works too.
Here is a good article:
http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef611.asp
I use a badminton racket to swat them. If I hit them just right they are knocked fifty feet. 8) If I hit them too hard they stick in the strings and I have to pick them out. :(
Quote from: Greg Cook on May 04, 2008, 11:07:19 PM
Homebrew solutions would be best (I'm a tighwad.)
I'm "thrifty" too. :D Plus I use whatever is handy. That lead me to attacking the bee holes with a grease gun. It works pretty good. The ones inside can't get out and the outside ones get stuck trying to get in. After a couple of years of this I had them knocked down, butt they're back and it's time to start lubricating my cypress again! At my parent's home (WRCedar) they didn't have a grease gun. ;D I suggested they paint their porch rafters where the problem was occurring. They did and no more bees.
Mark
These rascals seem to cycle. We have lived here 25 years and in the last 5 years have had two infestations. We caulk the holes and repaint over them. They raise heck inside from the sound of things but we get ahead of them for a couple years. In the barn and tractor shed we keep a can of Raid handy also. Bee venom is the only thing I am allergic to so I can't take a chance and swat at one and just tick it off. And this cycle thing works on mice and rats also. The last 2 years the shop has been over run. Catching all the chicken snakes I can and putting them in there for that. Nope never cared for cats. Good sawying weather here in La. CV
Spray some bug killer inthe holes and plug. I had a bad attack on one end of my house a few years ago, wet it down then threw powderd eight on it [sevn is illeagal now] looked like heck for a week or so but it kills them when they touch it. It rinsed off ok when I was done.
littls spritz of wd-40 in the hole..they crawl out and die..
and a badmiton raquet.
The kids and myself knocked the snot out of 'em this weekend. The youngest was armed with a Wilson tennis raquet, the oldest an aluminum bat and I used a stacking strip...I won ;D
I wondered how long it would take to find a post on this here. I almost started one last week. I have kinda let them have their way but I think I am ready to "move" on this. My flitch house siding is Hemlock and they seem to only go to the horizontal soffit and porch roof. I will try the racket and grease gun. I wonder if an annual vinegar mix or some sort of homebrew would work. I might like to experiement a little with this as MANY of us could use an easy solution (sprayer from the ground kinda thing)
Ironwood
I have found that the best thing for these pests is good old fashion fly paper.Give it a week or so and you have several dozen of them. :D
When they hover in mid-air you CAN hit them with a BB gun. Back when I was younger, I got good enough to score about half the time. Not really effective, but loads of fun ;D
Look up the Georgia Farmers and Consumers Market Bulliten under crafts or misc. there is a lady named Moira McCracken who makes carpenter bee traps
Heck, Timberfaller, I don't want to catch 'em and skin 'em, I just want to be rid of them! And the pelts ain't bringin' nothing, what with it being warm weather an' all. ;D
I'm working on a barn, about to start sawing the framing lumber when I can get a load of logs in here. I'm using poplar so when it dries, they'll have to chew a little harder to eat this one. Perhaps some Sycamore, too....
Greg
Yeah and it takes so many of em to get a good load to send to the fur buyer :D
I would assume those traps work like a yellow jacket trap that drowns them. maybe you could buy 1 and make a bunch more.
or maybe make one of those trap thingys, and put the fly paper inside?
had a shovel standing up at the edge of the garde the other day...*DanG bee sitting on it...sure enough..chewed a hole in that ash handle...gods but i hate the little buggers.
they make good fishing bait. Might as well get some return on their damage I always say.
bees are very busy souls
who have no time for birth controls
that explains why in times like these
there are so many sons of bees
james
wifey went to Horror Fright the other day...came in toting a present for me...a battery powered bug zapper tennis racquet...wanna talk about amusing...
I pulled a brand new butterfly net from the nieghbors trash last week, 6 year old son says "we can use that", boy did I. While on the phone numerous times the next day I must have killed 30 or so. ALOT less buzzing, the only ones I could not get were WAY up there.
Ironwood
i have knocked them down with a shot of carb cleaner, sort of wasteful i know.
i also have sprayed the lumber in question with a sprayer of malathion and when i come to a hole i just squirt it full. the next day under the drip edge there was 15 or so dead bees.
I had a lawn mowing customer that lived in a log house. I pulled in the driveway one day to mow, and he was about 20 feet up a ladder with, you guessed it, a tennis racquet. :D He had a little glass of alcohol and was shooting it up in the holes to pith them off, and they would come out and attack him, 20 feet in the air. ::) It takes all kinds, I guess. :D
Dave
I can tell you from experiance that when the bees start working on your log house you don't wait for them to leave on their own. ;) any insect invasion gets everything I've got!
Got a bad case of "BumbleBee Elbow" from swinging that tennis raquet. Had to drop back to a badminton raquet.
ELY,
MALATHION????? Yikes. careful with that stuff!
Ironwood
Drione dust is what kept coming to mind, I found it here today:
http://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/Carpenter_Bees.htm
They show several others. We had one homeowner that used one of those double bottle mixes, the bee's were boring the soffits right behind us.
Michelle is our sprayer here, she said to look up the MSDS's for each and start with the one with the lowest LD50, the lowest human toxicity.
Which would be the racquet ;D
The only log the bees went after was one that overhung the others by about an inch. They went straight up into the log, and didn't touch any others. I could see about a hundred other holes that had been puttied up.
Dave