One of our student subscribers brought this bug to the IPM team. It’s a male carpenter bee possibly Xilocopa Varipuncta. Females are black, males are fuzzy gold. Only the females have stingers and will only sting when provoked. Their named carpenter bees comes after their ability to burrow into hard wood or telephone poles to make their nests.
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Wikipaedia: December 8, 2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylocopa_varipuncta