Carpenter Bee Traps.

Have you had good luck with this design ?
Most others I’ve seen have the holes close to the top and angled upwards…..something about the bees not being able to get back out that way.
I’m going to have to build some for next Spring up here…the bees were awful this year and did a lot of damage : (

-- When did quiet and quite become the same word ? I'm guessing about the same time as your and you're did.

Do you need to put any kind of attractent in it? Great idea!

-- SATISFACTION = a large pile of sawdust and a great finish when the job is done

I started making them this year about the last of the season for the bees. I gave the first one to my son and he caught about 14 bees in a week. I am looking forward to next spring when the bees come out again and then that will be a real test. There are numerous designs on the net. I’m not saying mine is any better or worst than them and it is so far really untried except for the one my son has. I originally started out with 3/4 wood for the sides but I later changed to 3/8 which saved a lot of wood. I made them for cypress so they would withstand the weather.

No bait is used. The theory is the bees will use the provided holes instead of making their own. A plastic bottle on the inside inside makes it impossible for them to stay inside the box and they slide down through to the lower bottle. Just place the traps under the eves of the building (and some sites say at the top of the gable) where the bees seek to bore their holes.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -

I didn’t know those bees liked cypress. Mine seem to prefer pine and they will even eat their way into treated yellow pine which really suprised me. I gotta make some of these. Are you supposed to put some water in that bottle to drown them?

-- " I'll try to be nicer, if you'll try to be smarter" gfadvm

This may be something I have to resort to. I hate to kill a pollinator with the problems that honey bees are having to survive, but these carpenter bees are notorious and making my cedar sided home and a pine porch look like Swiss cheese! I also have woodpeckers poking holes in the cedar to get to the bees! At this rate I will be homeless by November or very exposed . . .

-- "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." ~ Edgar Allan Poe

This will be a spring project for certain. I don’t care for pesticides around my honey bees and this could be the trick unless it catches some of my little ladies. I think they could fly in and out without a problem.

-- "Man's ingenuity has outrun his intelligence" (Joseph Wood Krutch)

No water or bait required. The bees can’t fly back up the bottle neck. Also their natural instinct is to fly straight out. They don’t eat the cypress they just use the hole. I used cypress cause my brother gave me some cypress boards and also they take the weather better unfinished. I used Tightbond 3 glue

Don’t know how much pollination they do but the damage to property more than offsets the good they do. I would put several around the house so they would have more ready made holes to use.

As far as I know the honey bees don’t go in as they don’t nest in this style. Least I have never seen one in a trap.

I also gave my uncle one real late in the season and he called me one day and said he had 2 in his so I believe it is a good design just not truly tried yet.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -

A couple of pic of a trap on my front porch. This particular trap has only 2 holes.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -

Isn’t that crazy … I’d never heard of a carpenter bee until I read this. I had to go look em up on the internet to see what they were.

I was born and raise in Southern California, living at the beach most of my life … maybe they aren’t in Southern California?

Thanks for the education. :)

What about other solitary bees? Mason bees and the like. They also nest in holes in wood (but they are NOT destructive like the Carpenter bee! Just great early spring pollinators.) and might be attracted to something like this. Have you seen any in your traps? Presuming you have them in your area, to begin with!

I am not familiar with Mason bees.

This is from Google “Most Osmia species(Mason Bees) are found in places where the temperature drops below 0°C for long durations, like Canada, and they are well-adapted to cold winters.

I live in SW Ga so I doubt if they range this far south. Anybody else know?

The only bees down here I have ever seen in any traps of this kind are Carpenter Bees. That doesn’t mean other species won’t get in them but the target species is Carpenter Bees. To date I have never seen a honey bee in one.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -