Wood Bees Sting
Female carpenter bees can sting but almost never do.
Wood bees sting. Females may sting but they rarely do. The female carpenter bee uses her mandibles to drill the hole and. They are solitary and rarely damage structural beams.
They may even fly right into you. In the so-called large local reaction to an insect sting the swelling redness and pain may persist for up to a week. Carpenter bees do not eat wood but do feed on plant pollen and nectar.
So the best way to keep these bees away is to paint the exteriors. Well the short answer is that carpenter bees do sting. If there are stains try to put a gloss coating on it as the hard shiny surface has no appeal for the wood bees.
Do They Sting People. Male wood bees will not sting and may only hover when provoked. It can be rather unnerving being around them as the males will also hover aggressively around people who approach the nests.
Painting the wood work makes it unrecognizable as wood to these winged creatures. However except in cases of an overly large number of bees or several years of extensive tunneling the structural integrity of the wood is not compromised. However individual nests can multiply eventually destroying the surrounding surface wood.
The answer is a mixed one. Carpenter bees tend to attack unpainted and stained wood. Female carpenter bees can sting you although they are very unlikely to do so unless youre handling them or poking your fingers into their burrows which is already mentioned above as something you should not do.