Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Carpenter Bees

Bee skeet is fun and the Single Six is my preference but when you can't be there these work great.

https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/planting-and-maintenance/make-a-homemade-carpenter-bee-trap

They are bad this year. Never remember seeing so many.

Yep.

Not to hard to build.

Probably around 30 carcasses in mine.

A piece of hardware cloth stapled to a dowel works. Badminton racket probably faster handling.

DF

I got rid of all the cypress on my house last summer and that slowed the bee sighting a lot.
This was my fun gun for bee shooting,
https://shop.whittakerguns.com/product/2427179
Ronnie

Good ole Daisy red rider and a cold beverage! I shootem about twice a day! Best so far is 3 in a row

That is some of what they have left for luger around here.
Smaller boxes tho
Nothing else seems to work, plastic, flashing, filling the holes with goo if you can find em. Even tried nails/screws at the hole entrance at night when they are inside...

I be likin' .22 rat shot, crimped not in a capsule. Would give my left ring finger for a smoothbore .22 pump rifle.....

My Mom bought a house next to ours in 2005. When she bought it, it was in need of a lot of repairs. The roof over the back stoop had been varnished about 60 years prior and all the varnish underneath had fallen off, giving the Carpenter Bees a wonderland for decades. I fought those things all spring, and then got to the repairs on the stoop in 2006. I lost count how many of their bore holes I filled with wood putty, and then a couple coats of exterior paint later, the bees had no place to bore holes. To this day, I have those bees coming to check out their old stomping grounds every year. I saw one today looking for a place to bore a hole. All I can figure is they pass on information from generation to generation, or it is somehow passed on through genes. I hate what they do , but it is amazing after all these years they remember their old breeding area.

I just spent over a 100 bucks at Midway for some upgraded ammo. 11 pounds of #12 shot, some 451 gas checks, and overwad cards. Hotrod Lincoln is to blame. I'm gonna really shwack em next week. 😁

I've used home-made traps the last few years. I put up 9 traps around my house when the bees show up for a few weeks. The last time I took down the traps, I counted 128 bees total from the 9 traps.

I've got them in my barn. For the last few years I've been using crushed walnut hull polishing media... the stuff from my case polisher. I can shoot them inside the barn and it doesn't cause any damage. 10' is about my maximum effective range.
My best day has been 16 for 18 shots. Look forward to it every year... it's a hoot!

11lbs of shot should last awhile,lol.

I got 3 of them things I bought from the Co-Op, as soon as my sheit get's here, I'm gonna load up some magnum 45 Colt loads and blow em off the eaves. Anybody got some .460 brass I can have? 😁😁

I got 3 of them things I bought from the Co-Op, as soon as my sheit get's here, I'm gonna load up some magnum 45 Colt loads and blow em off the eaves. Anybody got some .460 brass I can have? 😁😁

Recently finished and installed 4 home made traps. They've been hard on my shed for years. I did the badminton racket for years and wanted to try something different.

Ya'll think I'm kidding, this sheit is gonna get serious now. 😁😁😁

What are you loading the walnut in?

Seems like a good use for a .410 Judge..

I had a pump house for the swimming pool in the backyard. Wood framed of course and each spring I would fight the carpenter bees.

My weapon of choice is the badmitton racket. As someone mentioned you get better speed with it, as a kid we used plastic baseball bats.

This year my best day on the beefields was 64, add 3 days together and it was over 100 bees. The ground was covered in bee bodies.

I had been planning to tear down the pump house as I filled in the swimming pool years ago. A neighbor wanted the metal siding and roof, so I let him
tear it down for the material. We were killing bees nonstop, de nailed the wood and piled the bad pieces up and burned it. I think I heard the bees screaming.
For the next 3 days or so, you could walk where the pump house stood and get buzzed by a pissed off carpenter bee. A few more died in the flybys.

I had used bee traps I had built for a couple of years and caught a bunch of bees that way. I think you need a multi-pronged approach to get rid of carpenter bees.

Some of the wood we tore down would split open and was riddled with tunnel chambers so bad it had no strength.

You will never stop the cycle of bees from year to year unless you take the wood down and out a piece someplace out of sight and let the bees have it. I fought them for years on my wooden decks.
My weapon on choice was a racquetball racquet, you gotta be quick!

Back in 2002, it was the first spring I'd been at the farm. I would sit out back in the evening and the wood bees would be almost intolerable. There were a lot of them, and they were overly aggressive. They don't sting, but they'll head-butt you like they mean it. I was constantly getting Kamikaze hits off my glasses. The first night, I came close to taking action, but I held back because I had already had some scotch. The next night, I held off Happy Hour. I had a single-shot 12 GA shotgun with a full choke and what was left of a case of cheap Yugoslavian Skeet loads.

Wood bees will hover for a moment on the edge of the gutter, the roof line, or a tall dandelion. You have to be quick, but the target is stationary. Pretty soon, I was up to nailing a bee with every 2nd shot or so. By the time I was out of ammo, I was pretty good. My best was the one I nailed just off the peak of the roof. He bounced down the shingles and fell into my open hand-- decapitated.

The next weekend, KYHillChick came out and inspected the carnage around the Thoughtful Spot. There were craters in the grass along with empty hulls all over the backyard. She was certain I'd gone 'round the bend. However, the wood bee problem was fixed and fixed permanently. It's now 2020, and we may get one or two wood bees a season at the Thoughtful Spot, but nothing like the dozens that were there when we moved in.