Help How Do I Get Carpenter Bees Out Of My Yard
As their name may suggest, carpenter bees enjoy boring holes into unstained wood. While this arrangement may work for the bees, it doesn’t benefit homeowners much.
Here’s what Chicago homeowners should know about identifying carpenter bees, ways to eliminate them, what kind of damage they cause on properties, and the best treatment for carpenter bees with pest control in Chicago.
How To Identify Carpenter Bees
At first glance, carpenter bees look a lot like bumblebees, which is why these two types of stinging insects are often confused. They may look similar, but these two types of bees are very different. Carpenter bees grow a little bit larger than bumblebees, but they also lack the characteristic yellow stripes that most bumblebees have on their abdomens. Instead, carpenter bees have black or blue-black stomachs, and their thorax does contain yellow, orange, or white hairs.
And, unlike bumblebees, not all carpenter bees can deliver a painful sting. While female carpenter bees are armed with a stinger, males are not. Regardless, most of these stinging insects aren’t interested in stinging you unless they have to. Most carpenter bee stings occur because you stumbled upon one of their nests, and a female carpenter bee thinks you may be a threat to her young. While they are important pollinators for flowering plants, another easy way to identify carpenter bees is by location. Since they like to drill and create holes in the wood, you’re more likely to find them hanging around untreated wood than anywhere else.
Does Anything Instantly Kill Carpenter Bees?
Even if carpenter bees aren’t aggressive or necessarily capable of stinging you, that doesn’t mean their presence is welcome around your Chicago property. But is there anything that kills them instantly?
What Damages Can Carpenter Bees Cause In Chicago?
You already know carpenter bees can cause some damage to the wood around your home or property, but how much damage can they actually do? While one carpenter bee drilling holes into the wood won’t make your deck collapse, constant drilling that goes untreated year after year can begin to cause some noticeable damage.
A single carpenter bee usually only tunnels into wood up to a foot deep, but the more tunnels they create, the weaker the wood becomes. If they’re drilling into structural wood, weakening enough boards can cause the entire structure or frame to weaken as well.
A single carpenter bee may not cause damage immediately, but if you’ve got enough of these stinging insects trying to create holes in your home, they could cause buckling ceilings, sinking floors, or bulging walls given enough time.
The key to protecting your home or property from carpenter bee damage is catching the problem before these pests cause significant damage.
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