I hope this is the right forum for this :-)

A few days ago I noticed a very beautiful bee on our deck here in SW Ohio. I've been trying to find identification, but the internet is sending me on a goose chase.

The bee was black, and it had irregular white patches on its back. It was about half of an inch long, and it was chewing at the wood on our deck. It even left a mark on the post. It sounds like a carpenter bee, but with the white markings on the bee in question I don't know.

Anybody have any ideas or any good identification web sites? I just thought it was pretty and wanted to learn more about them.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

-Anthony