Anyone on the east coast of the US has probably seen them. They are big, slow flying, hairy bees that are a major pollinator of open faced flowers and like to live in wood. Sometimes that wood is in trees or shrubs, but sometimes it can be in the wood in your house.

Carpenter or “wood boring” bees are considered solitary bees and live in tunnels they drill in wood. Many times they or their progeny return to the same place and live in the same holes year after year.

Certain times of the year, especially in the spring, you can see these giant bees slowly flying around your house or hanging around, almost hovering motionless around your eaves. These are generally the male carpenter bee and they are protecting the entrance hole to where their mate lives.

Male bees will sometimes buzz you, but they don’t have any stingers, so though it seems scary, they are pretty harmless. The female bees, which are the ones that do the real damage, do have stingers; but they are not very aggressive and generally more interested in foraging for food. They will generally only sting if really provoked.

Although carpenter bees are solitary bees, they are gregarious and like to live near one another. The damage they do is to make nests by tunneling into wood. They do this by rasping their mandibles (mouth parts) against the wood and then vibrating their bodies. They can drill nearly perfect circular holes in a beam or facia board that is about the diameter of your little finger. This tunnel serves as a nursery for their young as well as a storehouse of pollen for them to eat.
A good way to spot if you have carpenter bees is to look for the “spray” or grayish to black drip-like discoloration that fans out on the shingles or siding below where the bee hole is located.

Although you can eliminate these bees yourself, it is a tedious job. One way is to squirt insecticide or boraic acid into each of the individual holes and then fill them with caulking compound and then repaint the wood. If the infestation is bad enough the wood might have to be replaced.

In the case of carpenter bees or any other wood destroying insect, it is always best to call a professional so that you can be sure that the job is done right.