How To Repel Carpenter Bees From Your Wood Deck With A Simple Addition

If you're noticing large black and yellow bees buzzing around your wooden structures, your first instinct might be to worry about getting stung. While that's fair, if you start seeing round holes and sawdust near your wood deck, you may have bigger concerns. These buzzing creatures, known as carpenter bees, bore into wood, creating tunnels for females to lay eggs and for the bees to stay protected throughout the winter. Not only are the holes they create unsightly, but over time, repeated tunneling can weaken the wood on your deck. Even worse, there's a troublesome bird that carpenter bees can invite to your yard that may further damage the already affected wood. One of the best solutions to stop carpenter bees from tunneling and discourage them from coming back is to fill their holes with steel wool that's been soaked in vinegar.

This solution is pesticide-free, cheap, and easy to apply. Best of all, it's effective. Carpenter bees don't like the smell of vinegar and can't chew through steel wool, which successfully blocks their current tunnels and repels them from the structure. And if you haven't yet noticed any holes in your wooden structures, it's wise to look at simple solutions that can help stop a carpenter bee infestation before it starts. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There are many brilliant ways you should be using vinegar to get rid of pests, and deterring buzzy carpenter bees is high up on the list. Plugging up carpenter bee holes can prevent them from returning to their tunnels to overwinter. That means there will be no bees remerging out of holes in your deck next spring. The best time to do this is in the fall when the bees are not actively nesting. 

To plug the holes, you can use steel wool cut to size. It's best to wear gloves to prevent any painful cuts. Then soak the steel wool in vinegar and stuff it into the holes to block bees' access. The smell of vinegar can dissipate pretty quickly, so it can be helpful to fill a spray bottle with half white distilled vinegar and half water. Then, anytime you see carpenter bees hovering near your wood deck, give it a few quick sprays to help repel them.