We have some mountain laurel bushed in our backyard and these huge black bees are going nuts on them. I do not see the bees anywhere on my house or trim and we just painted it last Fall. It looks like the bees are coming and going to some pine trees further down on our neighbors property. I understand these bees can help pollinate things, but do they serve any other purpose and are they good or bad to have around? I guess they do not nest is colonies like other bees and drill small holes in their nesting wood. I sprayed the trees down with some citrus stuff and they are temp. gone for now. Should I put out traps or get more drastic to get rid of them?   I have never seen these huge damn carpenter bees though as we didnt have them in the Midwest. They are not aggressive though and most of them cannot sting as I understand. We have little honey bees working on our flowering bush up front and I will leave them alone.

If they don't start chewing holes in your house they are fine.
Back in the 80's I had a house built in the 40's that they started to chew up.

I had a blast hunting them with a tennis racket.
While most of them are black and rather stupid, the orange/red ones were rather aggressive.

ETA: They have rather big stingers, but I never got stung.

I had them attack a brand new shed that I built.  Some of the wood wasn't thoroughly treated, I'm guessing, as it was just a few sections that they attacked.

I loaded a half gallon pump sprayer with turpentine.  Turned those little bastards into gellatinous goo.

Before I did that, my GSD pup was eating them and got really ill.  Not gud.