They also have a voracious appetite for Georgia Pine which happens to be the material my inlaws summer home is made from. Not to be outdone, woodpeckers also enjoy eating a carpenter bee and their babies, so we end up with holes from the carpenter bees along with a string of holes made by woodpeckers in search of said bees.

Im not really too worried about being stung by them, and I agree they generally dont want to mess with you unless you are actively messing with their burrow. I have taken to putting out sacrificial 2x4s each season that I pre-drill(3/4" holes seem to do the trick) to attract the bees to easier pickings. This helps quite a bit, but I still have to end up spraying a few holes in our siding and deck each year as it will soon be swiss cheese if I do not...

So you live inside a vegan art installation?

A couple years ago I relocated a piece of driftwood from my small backyard to the front yard because a carpenter bee couple had taken up residence in it and the male was routinely dive-bombing us in the backyard (they don't sting, but are just aggressive).

I was amazed to see that the male kept returning to the same spot for what seemed like weeks looking for its partner in the now relocated piece of driftwood. I naively had expected it to track down the piece of driftwood just 40 ft away in the front yard, and it was kind of heartbreaking to see it searching for it in desperation.

Sort of. We had carpenter bees in our deck one summer and they were incredibly agitated and aggressive whenever we tried to use it.