FACT SHEET

FACT SHEET

Bees, Ants, Beetles, Termites: Are They Chewing Up Your Home?

They’re big and scary and look like bumble bees – inch-long carpenter bees with a shiny abdomen and yellow thorax. When humans approach, males may angrily hover a short distance in front of a person’s face or buzz around their head.

People stay clear of them. Most don’t know it’s only an act, flying around the nest playing guard. Nature has left this male ill-prepared: he has no stinger. Only the female can sting. It’s a potent sting but she rarely uses it.

For homeowners, a bigger but little-known danger lurks. Carpenter bees are wood-destroying insects that can cause serious structural damage if not caught in time and treated. Other pests that can eat through wood include: termites, carpenter ants, and powder post beetles.

If any of these organisms has established a nest in the wood of a structure, homeowners probably will need the services of pest management professionals to help determine and implement an effective plan to control them and prevent re-infestation. This is especially true if any form of chemical control is needed.

This plan is likely to be an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, according to Dr. Mark Lacey, Director of Technical and Field Services for the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), a trade group representing professional pest management companies in the U.S. and around the world.

IPM is a decision-making process that anticipates and prevents pest activity and infestation by combining several techniques or materials to achieve long-term management, such as structural repair, maintenance, biological and mechanical control techniques, and pesticide application.

Lacey said IPM differs from traditional pest management in that it employs an approach that requires more participation by the homeowner to achieve long-term pest management.

“Since their home’s likely their biggest investment in their lifetime, most homeowners are more than happy to take the time and effort needed to implement the pest management professional’s recommendations for an effective program,” he said.

Professional pest management can be important because the untrained eye often cannot see the structural damage caused by carpenter bees, carpenter ants, powder post beetles, or even the dreaded termites.

Everyone knows about the dangers of subterranean termites, which cost in excess of $2.5 billion in treatments and damages each year as they tunnel their way through structures. Damage to affected wood may be so great that the building may crumble or collapse entirely.

Not generally known is that there are seven species of carpenter bees throughout the U.S. They get their name from their ability to drill through wood and nest in near-perfect holes of about one-half inch in diameter. The hole is usually located on the underside of wood surfaces, including siding, soffits, decks, overhangs, fence posts and window frames. They tunnel aggressively in cedar siding.

Although the hole only appears to be only an inch or two deep, it rarely ends there. The female bee takes a right-angle turn and bores a gallery anywhere from four to six inches in a new gallery and up to 10 feet for galleries developed and used by several bees. This channel serves as a main corridor in which they usually wall-off smaller chambers a few inches long to hold their eggs and developing young.

Female carpenter bees will drill galleries in a wide array of woods, but prefer weathered and unpainted woods. Pressure treated lumber in decks won’t stop them.

Carpenter bee control consists of treating each individual gallery with an appropriately labeled pesticide. Aerosol injection systems are probably the most efficient, safest and quickest way to treat galleries, especially when on a ladder.

Similarly, carpenter ants get their name from hollowing out galleries in wood as nests. They can do serious damage to buildings when they cut extensive galleries in structural wood.

The first sign of an infestation may be seeing several sizes of worker ants crawling along a countertop, or small piles of ragged “saw dust” mixed with dirt particles, fragments of insulation, and insect body parts (frass). Each pile of frass is usually directly below a small hole in some wooden part of a cabinet, windowsill, or structural part of the building.
Worker ants push the debris out of their galleries through the small holes. Another common sign, most often seen in spring, is a swarm of winged reproductives emerging. These may fly to lights and may be confused with termites.

There are nine species of carpenter ants throughout the U.S., with as many as four or five species commonly seen in some places. All species mainly attack wood which is, or has previously been, wet and damaged by fungi.
Even though these ants first invade wet, decayed wood, they may soon begin expanding their smooth-walled galleries into sound wood. They usually come into buildings through cracks around doors, windows, or through exterior holes for plumbing, electric wires, TV cables, or phone lines. They will also crawl along overhead wires, shrubs, or tree limbs which touch the building far above the ground.

Carpenter ants can be hard to control. It usually requires a trained professional to detect the telltale signs of typical carpenter ant debris, gallery openings, foraging trails, or typical gallery cutting sounds. Just controlling the ants you see crossing the floor won’t help.

Then there are lyctids, commonly known as powderpost beetles because their larvae produce a very fine, powderlike dust (like talcum powder or flour) in their galleries. There are about 11 species in the U.S.

Besides piles of dust, another sign of damage and infestation are their round exit holes. Female lyctids lay their eggs in exposed wood pores, cracks or crevices. Lyctids attack the sapwood and only that of hardwoods, usually less than 10 years old.

They attack both lumber and manufactured products. Lyctids are usually brought into structures in wood which contains their eggs and/or larvae. This wood is typically infested during drying or storage. (Eggs are never deposited in or on waxed, painted, or varnished surfaces).

Lyctids usually attack oak, hickory, and ash, and will attack other native and tropical hardwoods. They also often attack bamboo.

For control, a local treatment or fumigation may be used depending on extent of infestation and the preferences of the homeowner.

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