Everyone is a critic of my smoking and that little black spot in the photo above which happens to be a bumblebee is no exception. I go out on my balcony occasionally for a break and to think and this little guy was tormenting me. I managed to snap a picture of the little devil after trying about 10 times. He has been patrolling my balcony all day and watching everything and scaring the crap out of me because he was acting so erratically and when another bee would fly in he chased it off so I looked up what I could find.

“I found this on bumblebee.org   A lone bee is hovering over my deck, patrolling my deck.
This is probably a carpenter bee male, he is harmless as he has no sting and is looking for soon to emerge females.”

I still don’t trust the little devil and I certainly don’t want to get stung. My balcony has a rubber roof and we have siding and the only wood is the post so if the horny little bee is waiting for females I think he must be in the wrong place. A few years back I had to have the phone company come out and change our telephone pole because it was full of those burrowing little critters and they were all over the place. Bill said they don’t sting, but from what I read on the site above some can.

I just read that the queen and workers can sting and are capable of stinging more than once, but the male can’t sting. At least he wasn’t out there after it got dark, but I’m sure he’ll be there in the morning waiting to torment me some more. Bill said there is one burrowing into the wood above his new trike dropping sawdust all over his bike and he wants me to kill it tomorrow. I Don’t Think So. I just read this on the site above ” Bumblebees do not dig their own nest and do not tunnel into wood. They may modify an existing space though.”

I don’t know if the above statement is true or not because of the incident with the phone pole, but if his is something else I certainly don’t want to be out there in an enclosed garage and make it mad at me. I have enough problems with my balcony bumblebee he can take care of his own.