Plant more flowers like salvia and mexican sunflowers. The bees cant be everywhere so the butterflies will get more chances to drink with more plantings.

And lavender and herbs like mint and rosemary, and oregano, basil! And lots of flowers!

I have to be honest with you mblan......it concerns me when people kill one kind of insect because they prefer other ones. I personally would have tried other things, like has been mentioned above. Even though we may prefer certain "beings" over others, they actually all have a place in this environment, for the most part. Are the carpenter bees drilling holes in wood close to your flowers? Then move the flowers back. Try to outsmart the carpenter bees, rather than kill them. I try to work with nature and not just arbitrarily destroy things that interfere with what I might prefer.

First off, there is a valid reason for killing carpenter bees, They're very destructive! They bore holes, BIG holes... and LOTS of them in the woodwork and roof rafters eaves of my house!

I don't go out in the woods and slaughter wild creatures that are happily filling their niche in nature for kicks.

Second, if I plant more flowers, more wood bees will come, drill more holes and make more little obnoxious wood bees.

They chase other pollinators, goldfinches and hummingbirds. They even chase me.

I have tried other methods (paper bag "wasps nest", citronella oil, etc) nothing works. It doesn't help that the neighbors garage is full of them and he doesn't seem to care. So when I see him leave I sneak over and spray his garage.

Should you try to "live with" roaches? How about termites, bed bugs, ticks, fleas, fire ants, wasps, killer bees, et al?

Sorry if it offends, but they're not polinators, they're vermin. The only solution is extermination, and if they don't like it, they can fly off into the woods and live happily ever after.

i’m not gonna argue with you but one thing I will say is that you could get into big legal trouble spraying someone else’s property with a chemical. One more thing… Only the queen carpenter bee stings and she’s busy doing other things. I have them badly in certain areas of the outside of my house. They challenge me all the time It doesn’t bother me at all since they don’t sting and they don’t get in my way. Yes I have some holes in my wood, but will fix that eventually. And they can start all over again. You and I just have different positions on this. yes, I pick my battles too We Set mouse traps in our crawlspace because they get into the walls and can chew the wiring and burn our house down. I guess we have to pick our battles. Some holes in my house siding doesn’t bother me much.