Fighting carpenter bees on front porch

I have been fighting off carpenter bees for three straight years.

The bees decided to take over the porch one summer.

Since then, I have had to deal with the bees every year. Anytime I came across a bee, I would grab a fly swatter and go after them. Sometimes I’d kill them with a handy shoe. If there were more than a couple of bees or nests, I would spray them and leave the porch empty for awhile. I was making some progress with thinning down the bees last summer. Unfortunately I was required to travel for work for almost 2 weeks; When I came home, the carpenter bees had obviously been very busy. There were lots of holes where the bees had worked into the walls. I noticed nests along the ceiling and bees trapped in the light fixture of the front porch. I planned to just go after them like usual. The bees swarmed me. They were super angry and chased me right out of the space. I couldn’t get back inside through the front door. I was forced to contact a professional bee removal service. Fortunately, they showed up right away. However, I quickly realized they were not the type of exterminators I had expected. The bee removal company was worried more about the safety of the bees than me. Bees are necessary for the environment and help pollinate so many different foods, but they can be super inconvenient. I wanted them gone. The team was more like sweet hippies than exterminators. I never mentioned that I had been spraying and killing the bees for years. The team of bee removal and relocation people did a wonderful job.

 

Wasp