Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Carpenter Bees

Traps work well. Had one trap get about 45 several years ago. That was over the summer. Trick is to kill a few and put them in the container. The live bees smell carpenter bee and come on in never to leave. It as fun as shooting them and not as rewarding as hearing that Thud when you connect with a badminton racquet but very effective.

The problem is not so much the bees boring holes as it is the woodpeckers tearing apart the structure to get at the bees.


Mike

They've infested my tool shed, and it seems like the more you kill, the more that take their place. I use a badmitton racket, and am now on the last one out of a set of four that we bought years ago. Yesterday afternoon, I killed 10 in one spot without ever moving. Have probably killed 50 already this year. I really should be spraying the bastids and not letting them do their dirty work.

As to pollinating crops, yes they do, and that is the main reason I've never sprayed them.

I [bleep] them with my pellet gun, pump it up with no pellets. The blast of air would blow them to pieces.

The hard way, IN FLIGHT. Not a very good kill ratio, but it's fun and improves one's wing shooting!

i use a pellet gun or a boat paddle

I live in a clear redwood sided house those 1x8 t&g boards are expensive! I HATE CARPENTER BEES!

Spray with Fipronil containing insecticides. Kills em dead!

One of last years bee hunts. Fun for an hour or so. Expensive ammo though.

Never got around to building traps. Need to do that and get a couple badminton rackets. Also want to get some shot and try rolling my own.

I dont like the CCI's with the shot cup. I haven't patterned the shot, but my success rate really goes down when shooting at the carpenter bees. I prefer the Federal that has the crimped end. Just guessing, but probably kill twice as many with the Federal. I'm shooting a cheap Heritage with a 6" barrel.

I had never seen this kind of bee until I was visiting my son in Missouri last year. There were hundreds around his house. I found a box of 22 shot shells, the crimped kind, and a Ruger 22/45 in the kitchen and went to work. Great fun. At close enough range they’d just disappear with wings and a few pieces floating down.

I've got a couple of the traps out, and while they do catch a few, they don't make a dent in the population.

A shot of WD40 in the hole when you know they're in there takes care of them.

I load 357 using wads cut from the styrofoam trays that steaks are packaged on. Use the mouth of a fired casing to cut the wads. Sometimes I'll put a light wipe of silicone caulking on the overshot wad. I need to load some in 44s to see if that works any better.
I've got a 45/410 Contender barrel, I might load a few rounds with walnut hulls instead of shot and with the petals cut off of the wads... might become my long range load for pass shooting. Lol

Shooting a pellet gun without a pellet can ruin it.

That's a classic fu ck ing picture right there.

Take a dead one and hang it from a string over a patio and it'll draw in others

Hang some kinda small to med. size paper bags stuffed with something to make them a full shape with a length of string under porches and eves. They llok like hornets nest and keep carpenter bees away. They have worked pretty good for me for 3 years now.

How is this for a fake hornet nest? I just hung it up 5 minutes ago.
Sounds just crazy enough to work. Damn, am I sick of the bees and the woodpeckers messing up my house.

Used to have a patio roof made out of logs, and the carpenter bees liked to burrow into the logs. After a year or two looking at a couple holes they had made just over the patio door, I decided to do something about it. When they returned that year, I waited until one went into the burrow, and I put a cork into the hole. Thought I was done with that, but then pretty soon I could see the cork slightly moving, and I put 2 and 2 together. So, I got a drill with a small bit, drilled a small hole through the center of the cork, stuck a thin spray can tube into the hole, and sprayed wd40 into it. Waited a while, and when I pulled out the cork, about half the effing thing was eaten away. Danged carpenter bee was making great headway into eating her way out of my trap.

No more bees used that burrow after that.