subject: Get Rid Of Those Pesky Buggers [print this page] Why would somebody drill a hole in our window frame? It just didn't make sense. We scratched our heads, and my husband filled the hole with wood putty, painted it, and forgot about it. Be darn if that hole, with its mound of sawdust, didn't reappear in the next few days. This time we just kept watching and lo and behold, found out that hole hadn't been made with a drill and a bit. No, that hole had been drilled by a bee! A Carpenter Bee in fact. A what? I had never heard of these industrious little pests before.
But in the following weeks we kept finding these little, exact same size, perfectly drilled holes everywhere-from the house trim...to the deck-from the stucco trim at the front door...to the window boxes out back. In fact, one day I was preparing the flower boxes for spring planting. I stuck my little shovel in the dirt of one box only to be attacked by a swarm of angry carpenter bees. They had drilled through the bottom of the window box and set up a huge hive under last season's dried out dirt! Even though I only actually got one small sting it scared me half to death and I don't mind telling you - it made my skin crawl! Okay. Now this was war. First I had to find out a little more about my enemy.
Carpenter Bees sort of look like regular bumble bees, except they have black shiny undersides. Though the males can buzz around being aggressive and territorial, only the girls can sting. Carpenter Bees burrow in to wood and form long tunnels with a nest or hive at the end. Sometimes the tunnels connect. Unlike termites, they don't actually eat the wood, although sometimes they use bits to form "walls" inside of their nests or hives.
