Understanding Carpenter Bees

While all bees are important in the pollination process of many plants and flowers, there are some that do not have much of a use beyond that role – like carpenter bees. The carpenter bee is aptly named because it creates their nests in wood, often unfortunately in the wood of your home. What these carpenter bees do is hollow out tunnels a “rooms” in the wood to lay their eggs but they do not eat the wood.

A Closer Look at their Habits

Carpenter bees typically do not cause obvious structural damage but rather cosmetic damage that is not easily fixed. They do not find obvious holes visible to the naked eye to start their burrowing but rather look for weaknesses in the wood whether it is around a nail or screw or even a simple scratch in the wood.

There are different varieties of carpenter bees throughout the country and depending on the area, their wood preferences change. What is common in all of these bees is that they much prefer softer wood or wood that is not well-protected by bark or paint. Fir, pine, cedar, cypress, oak, redwood … most wood varieties are not impervious to the destruction of these burrowing carpenter bees.

Their Life

Rather solitary in nature, carpenter bees do not create colonies beholden to one queen that lays all the eggs. Instead, adult carpenters will mate once per year with the male dying off quickly while the female lays the eggs for perpetuation of the species. She will burrow into the wood to create little rooms in which to lay eggs and provide food for the larvae in each room before dying too.

Eventually, the larvae hatch producing new little carpenter bees which end up collecting the leftover food and feeding off of it while working their way out of their current wooded nest. The carpenter bees make their way out, finding new mates, creating new burrowed wooded rooms before the life cycle starts over again.

While carpenter bees do not eat the wood they burrow through and usually do not cause major structural damage, what damage they do cause can be unsightly and costly to fix. It is important that homeowners prime and seal the wood of their home with multiple coats of paint or whatever is needed to “plug” any potentially vulnerable sites in which the carpenter bees can burrow. Professional help through the employment of a pest control company may be needed to combat a current carpenter bee problem as they are quite difficult to get rid of on your own.