Andy’s mom was right, this is a trap for carpenter bees.

Every summer carpenter bees start drilling little round holes in all the trim at the top of our house. We thought painting it would seal things up so a few years ago my entire summer project was to fill up all their holes with caulk and then paint over the wood. It didn’t work so well, they came back with a vengeance and just drilled new holes. Although our house had a lovely new shade of green trim so all was not lost.

Andy started looking for other solutions online and found these carpenter bee traps. Being Andy, he thought why pay for one when he could just make it? He found plans for one online, bought the cedar wood (apparently it has to be cedar) and went to work. I think it looks like a cute little bird house, but the theory behind it is that the bees fly in the little holes (same size as the ones they drill) and end up getting stuck inside the plastic bottle and can’t back their fat selves out of the holes. Andy hasn’t installed it yet, but word on the interwebs is that they work VERY well. Pretty nifty little device!