Carpenter bees, eh? One of them flew into the lobby of this small building where I had just come on duty on my guard job. Everyone was screaming and ducking it. I 'd just as soon not try to find out their gender!
It was male. The females are smaller, are usually in the hole, and aren’t aggressive at all. I try to slap the males out of the air.
There are both wasps and hornets around my house. I recently moved to the main floor apartment in a big old house, there are 4 units total in the place. It seems all the other tennants are guys in their late 20s. They aren’t particularly noisy or bothersome, but the do leave trash out on their decks/patios. So we have stinging insects and also raccoon(s) about the property. When I first moved it I grumble grumble swept all the “dog” poop from the back deck/stairs, to one landing above my place. Then I realized it was raccoon scat. I’m washing the whole back deck down with ammonia soon, but I know there is not much I can do. The land lord said he got in a nasty argument with the neighbours when he tried to live trap the raccoon, because they have a “free range” cat.
I WILL make this place livable and clean but the critters… flying, furry, and fun-timers aren’t making it easy!
Aren’t you afraid you’ll get stung?
Why would I be afraid I’d get stung by an insect that cannot sting?
We have a bunch of ornamental onion on the side of the house which was teaming with flies hanging out on the flowers. Not houseflies but similar and maybe 70% the size of the annoying house variety. So I guess those are doing the pollination there.
Even more interesting was the three praying mantises that took up residence among the foliage to eat the flies. Maybe even more that I never noticed; their long green bodies blended impressively with the grass like leaves of the plants.