Digger Bees love this Fair Haven location

Challenge

Digger bees, solitary bees that nest in soil, are so-named because they dig  tunnels to rear their young. For digger bees, it's all about location. Their nesting is retracted to certain sites that they are attracted to because of various land features such as slope, soil type, and drainage.  Because of this selectivity when choosing nesting areas, even though they are solitary bees, they appear to live in "colonies" that can number in the hundreds.

Digger bees are non-aggressive and rarely sting unless handled or trapped in clothing. Even then, their sting does not hold a candle to the wallop packed by a yellowjacket. Male bees, who don't sting at all, perch nearby in in shrubs, waiting to mate. The female does all the heavy lifting by herself; she constructs the nest and does all the provisioning. 

In most cases, digger bees are not a problem; individual bees with their individual nests rarely cause any trouble. If only a few of these bees burrowed into your lawn, I'd be surprised if you would even notice. The problem arises when you have to deal with hundreds of these active bees swarming over your property. That was the problem faced by this Fair Haven homeowner. It's distressing, to say the least. This property had little mounds of dirt sticking up all over the lawn. And when the sun came up, he'd be greeted by a swarm of bees buzzing all over his property. The fact that these bees are generally harmless compared to other stinging insects was of little consolation.

I'm not sure why this particular property in Fair Haven was such prime digger bee real estate, but this homeowner managed to have a digger bee problem every year for at least the past five years. I'd estimate that his property was taken over by a shade under a thousand nests. It was that big a problem.

Solution

Ridding a property of this number of soil-nesting bees can be a challenge. Applying a residual insecticide can be slow because you have to contend with sun and rain degrading the chemical. But, like every year before, we'll successfully knock down this population. With the numbers being so high to start, at least one followup treatment will most likely be necessary. But no matter what, this homeowner knows that I'm even more persistent than these bees. I'll stay on the job until this problem is successfully resolved and this homeowner gets his property back.