When carpenter bees emerge in spring and again in fall fill holes with a bit of steel wool a wad of aluminum foil a dowel and wood glue or even caulk.
Carpenter bee resistant wood. Paint or varnish exposed wood surfaces around your home to make them less attractive to the bees. If you want to make your outdoor living space permanently immune to carpenter bees without harmful chemicals you need to build with a naturally insect resistant hardwood like black locust. All of these wood alternatives are insect resistant. Polyurethane paints are the best defense.
Black locust is one of the hardest strongest and most insect resistant woods on earth. If that s not the way you intend to get rid of carpenter bees try the following remedies for carpenter bees. After filling the holes completely paint over them. No doubt they seem to prefer anything soft with pine being a favorite.
No doubt either treatment on painted or unpainted wood will stop any nests from happening for sure when kept active and done in season. How to deal with carpenter bees. A house should be painted regularly because exposed wood can bring on a full bee attack. Stronger still and less likely to fall under attack by carpenter bees is wood which is both painted and treated with either cypermethrin or insect repellent.
In fact i ve been amazed at the wide range of wood carpenter bees will utilize. Precaution pesticides are poisonous and thus need to be handled carefully. The most vulnerable areas are windowsills railings decks fences doors eaves and wooden lawn furniture. While replacing their wood siding and cedar shakes they consider our pre finished fiber cement siding.
Carpenter bees love soft woods like pine cedar redwood and douglas fir. Efficient and precise like any good carpenter these bees also known as boring bees reappear each spring outside the sanderson s northeast ohio home and begin drilling nearly perfect half inch holes into the wood. Its natural characteristics make it impervious to carpenter bees even without insecticides. Carpenter bees prefer weathered or unfinished wood.
Many homeowners have had to find solutions to the carpenter bee infestation that s ruining their beautiful cedar shake siding especially in their gables. So if you wish to deter them go with a hardwood if possible. Plug existing holes to prevent a future worker bee infestation. Hickory walnut cherry and oak are all good choices.
Fill the holes the openings of the carpenter bees nests using wood putty or wood dowels. Treated lumber is less attractive and they don t like painted wood. After this either varnish or paint the entire wood surface.