Is swatting at Carpenter bees with a badminton racket a sport?

If you are serious- stick with tennis and badminton rackets. If you are out for fun- go with your kid's Daisy BB gun.....

Edited to add: The males have a prominant white patch between their eyes (and NO stinger), the females do not have this white patch and DO have stingers.

They are pollinators, and with the problems honeybees are having, I'd leave 'em alone. They don't sting, to my knowledge. You can get or build a carpenter-bee nest to discourage them tunneling your barn walls.

You can get those electrified rackets at Harbor Freight! Only problem I have is, I hit them so hard I can't see where they go, so I'm not sure if I fried their behind or broke their neck!

Mon

I've got badminton rackets strategically placed as well.

You all are cheating. I use a hockey stick. does wonders for my wrist shot.

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Born July 4, 1776

Died November 4, 2008

Suicide

Carpenter bees like moist wood. It is an indication that the wood they are using is too wet. They don't sting. They don't have worker bees. They don't make honey. They will gradually damage the wood. Their holes connect to other holes inside the wood.

If you have them, use a pyrethrin or pyrethroid aerosol insecticide with a little attached straw. Inject it into the holes, then close the hole with a caulking compound. This suggestion comes from my pest control group.
Gary

I buy cheapo butterfly nets at the Dollar store, net 'em, and squash 'em.

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Cloven Trail Farm
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Not to our house they aren't,they have drilled little holes everywhere.

Considering there is an entire forest out there to bore into instead of our house,they deserve to die.

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I agree. I lived in a cedar sided home in the middle of the woods and the bees were drilling huge holes in my siding the size of 3/4 inch drill bits. I could hear them munching the wood through my wall when I laid in bed at night. I don't think swatting at a few bees attacking your structure has much of an impact when there are millions of them out in the woods eating trees.

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It is not a sport unless you are using a wiffle ball bat... Had some issues with them in the past. I added some silicon in the holes and they went away. I guess they figured it was more trouble than it is worth to drill if I was only going to plug the hole.

The way they get to the nectar of blueberry flowers is by chewing through the side of it - thereby not pollinating them. They seem to do more damage than good, overall -at least the ones that are in close proximity to my house and garden.

-rj

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No. Swatting at Bumble Bees and Yellow Jackets with a Badminton racket is........

We used to do that (wiffle ball bat) back when I was a kid!!! Ahh the memories...

I had a cedar-sided house that came under attack every year. Another poster said carpenter bees like moist wood. Not my bees. They went for the hard, dry, good stuff. Their "saw dust" would drift down on my head as I sat on my deck.

As for stinging, I wouldn't want to experiment with that. Maybe they misidentified the type of bee, but I've known a couple of people who said they were stung by carpenter bees and it hurt like you-know-what.

One spring when they were establishing territory -- and boy, are they territorial -- I saw what must have been two males in battle over a coveted eave on my home. One kept stinging the other until ithe defeated be retreated to a bush and died. The surviving bee hovered by the bush about a foot from the defeated bee for a long time until it was sure it was dead.

The worst part of my experience with them (and my cedar-sided house) was that woodpeckers would go after the carpenter-bee larva, and because carpenter bees bore in and then sideways, a few places on my siding looked like they'd been machine gunned. Oh, and there's nothing more enjoyable than hearing that rat-ta-tat-tat from the woodepeckers, is there?

No more cedar houses for me.

I used to think they couldn't sting until I was corrected on this by our Natural Resource Officer recently. The males can't sting. They are the ones usually hanging around the nest darting at anything in the area.. Females can sting but they normally do not unless heavily provoked. The sting is supposedly very painful, but aren't they all? lol

Yes - when it comes time to tear the barn down, it will be easier than without the bees.

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I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.

It's certainly not sport to me. It's WAR! Several bored into the back of my house (kiln dried pine logs for those experts who say they only go after wet wood) and built nests. Not long after, the piliated woodpeckers found those tasty larva. They left HUGE holes. Now I take them out (bees) by whatever means necessary. I haven't resorted to a gun yet.

My husband just laughs at me. I read some of this thread to him and he just went into the basement and brought up a tennis racket. Guess maybe it's going to be a sport after all. Lol

I have never seen them visit a flower. The males fight with each other, even bumping into people when they do. Otherwise, they intermittently hover and zoom around our front porch and give everything that comes and goes a "drive-by". I don't care for a honkin' big bee hovering 6 inches in front of my nose giving me the stink-eye. So far, only found one hole that the female had bored out (80-year-old clapboard, perfectly dry behind vinyl siding) and put enough wasp spray in it I don't think her or the larvae will ever emerge. I don't know about the stings, but two people in our house are allergic to wasp stings so I would rather not find out. Tried to kill 2 of them last night with the "flip flops of death" while I was outside grilling steak, but they were too quick for that short of a weapon. Now, where is that racket......

Dollar General had a childs badmitten set--$3 if I recall, maybe only 2. I'd a paid 5 to get a couple rackets to play bee-mitten. I don't even have the greenhouse finished yet and have 5 holes bored into my rafters. Only benefit I'm seeing from them is developing hand-eye control. I even got one Sat. evening sitting around the fire with my bare hand. Death to the wood bee and death to the ticks (a entire thread unto itself).

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Here's an easy deterent. Spray a little orange or lemon oil where they're looking to make their home.
I'm extremely allergic. If I get nailed again, I don't know if I can make it to the hospital.
I just don't kill things unless it's absolutely necesssary.- Like ticks ! LOL!!!