Robbie, are you sure they're not the carpenter bees?
A lot faster and less fuzzy than bumblebees, otherwise similar.
Cooling temps might make them sluggish though.

I've been infested for years.
The real damage comes from the wood peckers, digging out the grubs.

hey, linnea2, thanks for the post... i've never even heard of carpenter bees, until you posted that. i just did a search on google, and now i'm not sure. maybe this is what we have! i'll have to look more closely when we are back up at the house this weekend...

i'm going to look some more on google --- but do they pose a problem? if so, do you have any suggestions on how we should go about getting rid of them? (hopefully, something not involving toxic chemical pesticides?)

thanks!
--robbie--

Carpenter bees! I have them every year. You could not drill a more perfect hole than they do in wood. Amazing to watch, VERY distructive to wood. I try to swat/kill as many as I can. last year I must have killed HUNDREDS.

Tom

We've seen both carpenter bees and bumble bees and mostly they dont bother anyone. The carpenters do make single holes to lay the eggs but we've had them in the soffits for 30 years without having to replace the boards. I say, leave them alone. Carpenter ANTS do a lot more damage and I'm more than willing to kill them.

I've had bumble bees in my house this year for the first time ever. I've seen carpenter bees in the past and I'm pretty sure that's not what it is. Strange!

Robbie,

thanks so much for this post, and everyone else who wrote in. I have noticed lots more bumble bees this year..in fact, there were a few that would fly back and forth and stay with you on my front porch..like they were following you. My husband was catching the menacing ones in a toy net and squashing them because they were in our faces all the time. I noticed that the backs were dark and 'shiny'. After reading this post, I looked up a photo comparason of Carpenter Bees vs Bumble Bees and sure enough we have Carpenter Bees. We have seen many of these bees, which we thought were bumbles around our back enclosed porch too, on the outside by the soffit (sp?). Tomorrow we will be checking for holes and damage....Thanks so much for this post. Good luck with your bumbles...we have so many different bees, and insects here with all the flowers. We just thought they were strange bumblebees. The bumblebees are usually on the flowers, not hovering around us about 5 feet in the air..that should have clued us in....Thanks again for the post... JoAnn

hey joann --- glad my post helped you out! i got a better look at my bees this weekend. i don't think they are carpenter bees. from what i understand, the thorax of the carpenters are shiny. the bees in the bedroom are fuzzy. so i'm somewhat certain that they are bumbles --- but we've never had so many of them in the house before.

this weekend, while in the front of the house, i could hear this faint, constant humming/buzzing noise. i looked up at the trees (i think they are norway maples?), and could spot a bunch of bumblebees flying around the flowers. the trees are very close to the house, so maybe some of them are somehow getting into the house? they primarily end up in the bedroom. i tried to look around, but didn't notice the entrance. but our house is so drafty. maybe they can crawl in around the windows somehow?

it did not seem to be as bad this weekend. i do capture and release them out the window, using a glass and an envelope. none of them have been at all aggressive. but honestly, it was starting feeling like they were somehow just circling around and getting back inside the room!

sometimes it feels like each spring brings a new plague!

:-)

--robbie--

We too have had many flies in the past, and wasps too, but this year the bumblebees have moved in, and they are bumblebees. We thought it odd, but thought it better to have bumblebees than wasps...

Yes, and I see them everywhere in my garden of veggies and flowers. But where do the bumblebees live.

We have bumblebees in our yard, here in Madison, Wisconsin. They live in a ground nest-I have seen them come and go from a small hole near a fence in our front yard. We also have blueberry shrubs and a raspberry patch, and we see bumblebees visiting these flowering plants constantly during the growing season. I find it easy to co-exist with bumblebees, but I am not so tolerant of yellow jackets.