If I Were a Carpenter (Bee)

Imagine if you will that you saw a pile of fine sawdust near the support beam of the stairs leading down from your deck. Next, imagine that you heard faint, pained singing coming from the direction of that pile. The closer you approached the pile, the louder the song became. Until you finally recognized the melody was this:

Drawn closer to the song, you realized that it came from a perfectly circular hole carved into in the support beam. It's as if an itinerant handyman with a circle cutter stopped by to make a hobo sign on part of your house. Well, if you take out all of the stuff I've written up to this point involving Tim Hardin's classic song, that's what we discovered this weekend at our house. We have carpenter bees!

Actual photo of the circular hole made by the bees

Despite this beam being treated with stain, the bees made themselves right at home. According to the ever useful about.com, the next step to take to avoid structural damage is to apply insecticide to the entryway.

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