Carpenter Bees are Friends, Not Foes
When my children were young, they were terrified of carpenter bees. I can see how these creatures would appear malicious to young children. As far as bugs go, they are pretty darn big. They make a loud buzzing noise that is fairly scary sounding. Plus, they tend to hover around in close proximity to people’s heads.
I do remember one particular spring afternoon many years ago when my wife tried to send the kids out to play, and they refused to go. They were straight up mortified of the carpenter bees that were flying outside the back door that lead to our deck. When I insisted that the bees were not harmful, my son protested that the bees would “dive bomb” him every time he went outside. (I suppose that even if your dad tells you the bees won’t hurt you, the idea of being dive bombed by a very big bee is still scary.)
The thing about carpenter bees is that their bark is definitely worse than their bite. Because they are so large and make a loud buzzing noise, they appear rather intimidating. But the male carpenter bees don’t even have stingers, so they literally cannot hurt you at all. The females do have stingers, but they won’t sting unless they are seriously provoked. (As in roughly handling them.)
Carpenter bees are also frequently mistaken for bumble bees. The difference is that the behind of a bumble bee is striped with yellow and black, and very fuzzy like the rest of its body. The carpenter bee has a fuzzy body, but its behind is black and glossy, not fuzzy. Neither carpenter bees nor bumble bees produce honey.
The bees that hover around your back deck or front porch are probably the harmless male carpenter bees. This is because pretty much all the females do is burrow a hole into a piece of wood to make their nests and lay eggs. Then, the males chill out in the general vicinity outside the nest to protect it. So when my son said that he was being dive bombed by the bees, well, he was probably right. This was the male bees’ attempt to keep my son away from their nests. The male bees do the same thing to other bugs.
Recently, I found a forum online about carpenter bees in which a woman suggested swatting them with a tennis racket to get them to go away. This seemed like a darn shame to me. Bees are one of our number one gardening friends! Yes, carpenter bees are large and might bump into you, but they’re not going to hurt you.
Now one thing that you should look out for is this: make sure that the females are not creating their nests in your wooden siding. They are capable of channeling tunnels into wood, and seriously weakening it over time. If your wooden siding is painted with pigmented paint, you’re golden. The carpenter bees cannot tunnel through this. If your house is painted with wood stain, they can burrow through this, and you’ll want to keep an eye out. The holes that carpenter bees drill are pretty perfect- hence their name. If they’re drilling into your siding you’ll notice holes that go with the grain and can extend as long as a foot or so. Below is a picture of some holes from carpenter bees. See how perfectly round they are?
One of the best ways I have found to handle carpenter bees is to actually attract them, rather than swat them away. The key is to draw them to a spot a ways apart from your house. This way they won’t hover around your front and back door so much. Every year I pound some stakes of soft, untreated wood into my garden. This is paradise for carpenter bees. Plus, it gets them away from my home, and into my garden where they can stay busy at work pollinating all of my flowers. They’re friendly, harmless, and work for me.