Woodworking

The insect above looks like a bumblebee, but it's not. It's a carpenter bee. I've had some interesting, recurring experiences with these creatures in the last few years.

When we moved in, our realtor pointed out a number of "bee holes" high up under the eaves, in the flat panels that run beneath the gutters. This was the first I'd heard of bees making holes. They just needed to be filled in, said our realtor. No big deal.

Well.

I borrowed the neighbor's extension ladder and filled the holes I saw with wood putty, followed by a coat of paint. But carpenter bees are persistent. They either bored through the filler, or more often, just started digging a new hole nearby. Apparently they don't like painted surfaces, but if they find a small bit of bare wood, they're all over it. The female does all of the work, chewing at the wood like an insect beaver. The noise is even audible--a light "nik" every five or ten seconds, followed by a shaving of wood fluttering down. The don't consume the wood like termites, simply excavate it for a home.

I started to recognize other signs of infestation. A drift of sawdust (chewdust?) on the porch is the most obvious. Once the holes are more established another typical sign is a broad V-shaped spray of ejecta extending downward from the hole on the side of the house. This is exactly what it seems: bee shit, tossed overboard. The stuff calcifies and is a bitch to get off.

Once a bee has bored an entrance, she turns 90 degrees and burrows along the length of the board a few feet, and then lays eggs. As I came to discover, some bees reuse and extend these nests every year.

Meanwhile, the males hover nearby, doing little more than look aggressive. They're very inquisitive--they'll sometimes attempt to mate with hummingbirds and will chase a tossed pebble--but they're basically harmless.

All of this I learned gradually as the bees morphed from curiosity into nuisance. Once you notice one bee hole, more seem to appear. And the persistence of these creatures was pushing the boundaries of my ecological sensibility.

My goal was not to eradicate them. Carpenter bees are great pollinators, and God knows that pollinator species have been hit hard in recent years by pollution, hive disorder, and habitat destruction. We have a garden and a lot of flowering bushes, and I want these kinds of insects around.

But I don't need them damaging my house at the same time. The damage they actually do is fairly superficial, but still.

Filling their holes alone didn't help much, especially with the more established nests; they'd bore in further along and rejoin the network. I tried dousing the area with insecticide to deter them, to no avail.

For several problem areas, I ended up killing every bee that returned. One nest in particular--right above our kitchen bay window--was particularly stubborn. Up on the ladder, I could hear a cluster of bees in the wood, buzzing with annoyance as I probed their entrance hole with compressed air and a thin metal spoke. When they'd had enough and began trundling out, I speared them one after another. There were eight of them dying on the ground before it was all over. I sealed the hole, painted over it, and not surprisingly, I've had no issues in this spot since.

I'm an environmental idealist when it comes to such matters of suburban living, up to a point. Then I become a pragmatist.

Each spring about this time, the bees get frisky again, hovering around the gutters, searching out new homes. I've found several telltale drifts and successfully sealed holes before they've gotten too deep, without further loss of life. If I catch them early enough, it seems, I can persuade the females to chew elsewhere. But just like me, if they get to a certain point, there's just too much energy invested, and there's no turning back.