Carpenter bees resemble bumblebees, but look for the black hairless abdomen:
Carpenter bees bother me sometimes because they make holes in our housing structures and they are loud as they buzz around you, but they are really relatively harmless. They are always buzzing around me and my guests, which scares people sometimes, but I’ve never had them bite anyone.
ah ok,given their size and fatter look I called them big black bumblebees
Carpenter bee, nce to have the proper name, and yeah there are dead trees around so I see why they are so happy here.
They love the nectar of wisteria, that is for sure, especially during the first time of blooming we have 10m x 3m of blue flowers above our front terras. No green leaves, only flowers. Heavy scented air, nie. And these carpenter bees are very funny, indeed as I just read on wiki, they are very budy chasing one another.
Gez 20.000 species of bees….
Well I have seen about 10 smaller bees (such as honey bees) more then 10 bigger more hairy of which the carpenter is the biggest.
all going for nectar so we see them on flowers (of buzzing around roof edges to find a spot for a nest (lol our car backdoor has a window that can be openend but we rarely do that, last autumn I found 20 cells of a bee/wasp species little nest. And even more LOL in an crack in wood here indoors another bigger bee type (I called this a bumblebee too) kept on flying in to make a little nest.
I stuffed it with some toothpicks since escorting her out did not help. After a few tries she flew out 
)
Carpenter bees caused a garage roof collapse in a rental house I used to live in. They ate several of the rafters in half…….CRAZY!
Luckily I there are mostly only paper wasps round my parts. Nests usually pop up on my balcony during the spring/summer but I typically just ignore them and they ignore me. Well except that one time when a colony nested right above rear tire of my motorcycle…they had to go in that instance! :smiling_imp:
All motorcycle pictures welcome here. 
Drift Monkey, you’re only about an hour South of me.
And if the yellow jackets are building nests inside your fender, you’re not riding anywhere near enough!
Does that mean you can build me some lights, fellow Texan? :smiling_imp:
To be fair, these damn paper wasps are only mimics…they’re totally harmless (unlike the red ones I’ve had in the yard growing up).
…and you’re right Dale…sadly, last summer I didn’t ride nearly enough! :weary: Making up for that this year though!
I won’t have the proper names but here’s what we’ve got in upstate SC:
Bees- they generally leave you alone. You can swat at them without much risk and they come in several sizes and colors. All are proportionally ‘fat’ compared to others.
Wasps- they tend to nest under eaves and the nest is like the front of a multi-emitter light. It will be attached with a single stalk. If there are only a few on the nest you can knock it down quickly by hand safely. If several are there some will be ’guards ’and they will attack. Otherwise tend not to sting but can. Dark colors.
Mud Daubers- dirt tube hives and don’t sting even when you knock the nest down. Very slender and dark colors.
Yellow Jackets- almost all live in ground nests. Mean and hateful buggers. Same color schemes as some bees but more slender. You watch ahead when walking/mowing/trimming for them flying at the nest opening. Mass attack at the nest and will sting singly elsewhere. When dark well after sundown, find the nest opening via dim light or spill and pour a cup of gasoline down the hole. They won’t see sunup. The ones nesting elsewhere are a little less aggressive. Those nests are like wasps but the whole nest attaches to the structure instead of on a stalk.
Hornets- Mean and hateful x2. Watch out for the ‘gray paper’ nest. If it’s accessible and safe you can burn them up in the nest late at night. I’ve soaked a few nests with pesticides at night which worked after a couple days. Slender and dark colors. There’s a variant we call a “Japanese Hornet” that’s like an elongated giant bee in color and they have an equally big sting when provoked. The bigger abandoned nests can bring decent prices as they’re in demand for display and decoration purposes ($50+)!
Carpenter Bees- big big big, the males hover near the nest hole and act agressive but it’s all show. Fun to use as a badminton birdie. Only females in the nest will sting. Nest is a 1/2 (13mm) round hole in wood. What you don’t see is how much wood they eat past the opening- they give termites a close race destroying wood. ‘Oogle ” Carpenter Bee Trap’, those really work but have to be in place by early spring to be effective. Caulk holes closed and paint well leaving no raw wood exposed anywhere to help deter them.
AFAIK all these have a good and useful purpose so leave them alone where you can, with 2 exceptions: yellow jackets in the ground are too vicious and it’s unsafe to have them near people. Carpenter Bees are safe but will eat your house up quickly so they too must go. These are so prolific here you won’t do harm taking them out of your space. Bees and their relatives do a huge amount of food plant pollination and are critical to human survival so don’t kill indiscriminately or needlessly.
Bee keepers tell me that perfume, cologne, highly scented deodorant, and having consumed alcohol recently trigger attacks. They also tell me that if you take a couple Benadryl capsules immediately after a sting it will hardly bother you, but speed is essential- after about a minute the capsules will have little effect. How that works with non-bees I don’t know. I deal with all of these critters constantly in my work on old houses, some of which have been vacant for years. Being careful I only get stung a few times a year. I once painted the outside of a vacant bee infested house at night-they were in every wall. During the day you could hear the humming 100 feet away and there were so many flying around you couldn’t work. Don’t know what the owners did but I finished and got paid 
Phil
Hello, I’m new to this forum but saw the mhanlen and clicked as I thought there might be another video. As I was reading and became interested in the content, I saw this comment from Bugsy about being tagged “rude”. Glad I did because my own presumption is that his comments’ content would be 100% A-OK, however it’s nice to know that I would/may have been wrong. I read the forum rules, however, in reading along and seeing this occurrence, I guess I have a little bit better understanding for the principles involved in maintaining the forum’s atmosphere at BLF. Even pictures with crap talk are a no-no. Got it.
Glad your weren’t too severely damaged in your encounter buddy. Be careful. And not to be all codependent hijacker here BUT, I have had vertigo from vestibular neuritis for the past 10 days so, out of work, out of play. I think/hope I’m at the tail end as today seems better.
I actually had the camera rolling… and you can hear me shuffling around in the background over about 2 minutes and me finally declaring I was stung. It’s hard to tell what was going on, or I would have posted it. Plus it’s pitch black.
Aha your first scene of a “Blair witch project” kind of project
Lol I still read “penis” instead of “perils” at first glance
Informative topic will battle those carpenter bees next spring for sure with some traps and will check the wood of house and barn.
The key to making the traps most effective is the smoothness of the faces of the holes. A drill press with a Forstner bit does best but sanding after drilling will do. In season you can ‘collect’ a liter bottle full in 2-3 days 
And you never thought there were so many of them nearby!
Phil
Testing a hunting light (Solarforce M3 with a green XP-E module) and coming across a somewhat annoyed and quite venomous tiger snake.
He was pretty cool about it really and we went our separate ways, both in one healthy piece.
Wow if I see a snake it goes fast away so all but two one a piece of the tail.
Nice pic!
Oh I have a rather good idea since our wisteria is hanging above the front terras (~10*3meters) and is buzzing with them when there are flowers, they really like it
And the chickens will probably like them
Well, wasps and hornets are known to do that. And although you don’t have actual footage of the alleged perpetration, with the wasp carcass and giant knot it should be a slam dunk. You were in fact stung by that little guy. But no, it’s likely not an Oscar worthy production.
Me, I’m here in California and haven’t been out of the city in ages. Rarely in the past 15 years at my house have I seen any wasps etc. Would have to head elsewhere which I’ve also rarely had time to do. This thread about wasps and hornets turned into kind of a treat. An interesting and informative scope of blogging from the incident. Thanks contributors.
Wait…what? They do?
Sure do. :smiling_imp:
Yes
Interesting. So if I’m going to be in there vicinity for a time, I’ll bring my manners.