Bees

Where do carpenter bees go when they get the munchies?  Well…My house!  They sneak into the space between the aluminum clad fascia boards of the gable ends of the roof and the vinyl siding and they bore into the beams.  Or they chew on the unpainted beams of my porch roof.  Actually they don’t do it to eat the wood, they do it to make a home for their little, baby carpenter bees.  But the effect is the same as if they were ‘eating’ the wood.  There is sawdust all over the place and their dribbly spit mixed with the sawdust from their chewing is all over the siding and the railings and the deck.  It is a mess.  And it is not too good for the house either. 

Over the years I have pretty much ignored all this chewing up of my house.  Every once in a while (when I see a little pile of sawdust on the deck or under the gable end of the roof) I would climb up and find the hole and plug it up with a little bit of aluminum foil.  Before I would put the plug of Reynolds’s Wrap into the neat, 3/8” hole, I would bang on the affected area just to make sure I wasn’t trapping one of the little suckers in the hole.  Then I would push a healthy plug of metal foil in and that was that.  But lately the sawdust piles have proliferated and I see swarms of the docile bees hovering over the roof and near the raw wood of my porch beams. 

Enough is enough, I said to myself, and I have instituted the “RSG Program of Carpenter Bee Banishment”.  I bought a power washer.  I bought foam “backer rod” (which is a material to fill large gaps prior to caulking).  I bought plenty of silicone caulk.  I have taken out my ladders and tools, and I have mounted an offensive equal to the effort brought forth on this date by the Allies in 1944.   It is my intent to clean, fill and paint every area that might be deemed “desirable” by a carpenter bee and I began to implement my plan today.  My team and I started on the low gable on the north end of the building.

I will not bore you, dear reader, with the details of the effort except to say that many, many trips were made up and down an extension ladder, much energy was spent diligently stuffing/caulking/wiping/moving ladder/ surrounded by a very pissed off swarm of giant yellow and black, hairy looking bees.  No need for more detail than that!  When I was done with the north elevation I sat for quite a while observing the bees from a perch on the rock wall below the area of the former bee residences.  I marveled at how persistently one of them strafed and hovered over the area that had, up until an hour ago, been the front door to the apartment complex he and his friends had under construction in the end beam of my roof.  In fact I marveled that a creature so ungainly in appearance could fly at all.  It seemed to defy the laws of aerodynamics.  

After working next to the swarm for a couple of hours while I sealed the area it became obvious that they are very peaceful bees.  They’d come close and veer off, come back, veer off…etc.  More curious than aggressive.  I never worried about being stung.  The possibility of falling off the ladder was much more likely so I paid attention to my balance and position first, my work second and the bees a distant third.  I am still alive tonight.  The work got done.  The bees are homeless and pissed!

It was suggested by someone I discussed the “bee situation” with that I should just get some of that wasp stuff that shoots out of a can thirty feet high, and kill ‘em.  I rejected that as a possible solution.  It would have temporarily “solved” one problem but in the long run I would have also set in motion my own death.

You see, we must co-exist, the bees and I, for one very important reason.  That is-I may kill a few of the bees or even all of the bees who are attempting to cohabit in my home,  But, and this is the most important consideration, the bees will eventually kill me.  Merely by no longer being there the bees will cause myself and all the humans I represent in this mini-drama to perish.  Who will pollinate my eggplant in my garden when the bees are gone?  In fact, Life with out honey…?  I would rather be dead.

So,  Let us bee-proof our homes.   Let us look on the Bee in wonder-at its industry and it's purpose.  Long live the Bees.