The carpenter bees are doing a number on the exposed rafters on my barn. Fortunately they don’t touch the items that are treated or painted. Does anyone know from experience what I might use to spray these rafters with to encourage them to go elsewhere? They’re making Swiss cheese out of my barn. I’ve had the traps up every year but even if I catch 200 of the little bastages they just find reinforcements and keep on chewing Thanks! Edit: I feel like I’m going to have to either replace some of the rafters or “sister” some PT ones to the existing ones.
They're actually somewhat rare here for whatever reason. I've only seen one once - unpainted/treated wood of a greenhouse wall. I thought it was a bumblebee at first until I watched it for a while and listened to it chewing. I wasn't gonna worry about just one and it was chewing a tube in a board not a structural beam. Hey, they're also pollinators , but if there were many and were eating my building I'd have to find what to spray with.
Never seen them around here years ago...but now they are turning my wood shed into Swiss cheese!! Nuke em with brake kleen...they drop instantly!
We have mixed an insecticide with diesel and sprayed the rafters on oe of our sheds, they have bothered it. We've had a few try a treated board also. I have sprayed brake cleaner in the holes when they were boring, unalived quite a few.
About ten years ago I had a couple of newly built tables made from cedar which happens to be like crack for carpenter bees. One Saturday morning they started to confront me while I was working in the yard. They would hover right in front of my face and dive bomb me, but I never felt threatened knowing they can't hurt me. This was after I found some holes they bored in my newly made tables. After realizing wasp spray did nothing to them, I broke out the badminton racket. I think I remember nailing at least 20 that day. Afterwards I was wondering what I looked like to my neighbors, standing in the middle of my yard swinging at what must have looked like air. I did get a chuckle out of that at the time. I ended plugging the holes in my tables with aluminum foil trapping any eggs inside.
