A big, scary bee in your yard just charged your face, hovered an inch off your nose, and dared you to flinch. But here's its secret: it's completely unarmed. It couldn't sting you if it tried.
That's a male carpenter bee, and males have no stinger. The whole act, the dive-bombing, the furious hover, the charging at anything that moves, is pure theater.
He's guarding his patch of porch and bluffing every creature that wanders past, running entirely on intimidation he cannot back up. The females can sting, but they're so easygoing you'd likely have to catch one in your fist to manage it.
People go to war on these bees over the holes they drill in the eaves. But one round hole is just a nursery, a tunnel a female bored to raise her young, and the real damage only adds up over years of reuse. Paint or seal the wood and they'll leave it alone, since all they want is bare softwood.
So look closer at the bluffer. It's one of the biggest, most important native bees on the continent, a heavyweight pollinator working your flowers all summer long.