Give me your iP address and I will unblock you. You can see by the links that they are all referring to an item that is no longer on the website. I tried to underline the item below. It's happening to the same 3-4 items over and over and they were all deleted weeks ago. You mentioned to make sure they were all deleted. I did that but is there some other place on the server, or my site where they might be stored??

/index.php/component/k2/]item/11-cool-rush-at-the-downtown-cafe-in-el-cajon-on-april-11th/11-cool-rush-at-the-downtown-cafe-in-el-cajon-on-april-11th?limitstart=0&post=061&ar=0974

When I copy the link to my browser and hit enter it returns a 404 error code but the links themselves do not show a 404 error code. My hosting company says it's constantly keeping the CPU usage high and wants to see the quantity of hits go down on these deleted items. Is there anything more that can be done?

K2 will return a proper response along with a 404 HTTP status code. You can see it at demo.getk2.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=534554 . So since this is also happening for you, there is nothing more you can do. I think that it is a matter of time for bots to stop hitting your server ( assuming that 404 is returned ). Regarding performance in general you should always enable Joomla! cache. Finally ensure that you are using the latest version of K2 ( 2.6.8 ) along with the latest version of Joomla! for your series ( 1.5.26, 2.5.20, 3.2.4 or 3.3 ).