I've always had bumbles here but today I saw a virtual swarm on my redbud tree . They were kinda small and I didn't get close enough for a proper ID so I was wondering......

1) Do bumbles swarm like this ?

2) What about carpenter bees ? I inspected the house for any signs of infestation (0) but I do have a couple of dead hackberries in the back pasture .

3) Think I have a bumble colony nearby ? If so , how far do they travel ?

4) Think I need to invest in a Kevlar suit for mowing season ?

1 No
2 No
3 Possible. They like to nest in old bird houses, meter boxes. Stuff like that. They travel a few miles
4 No. Just make sure your mower has a kill switch and run like hell if anything goes south.

You had a bee swarm. Probably just a small one. Bigger swarms are coming.

By "bee swarm" , I'm assuming you're referencing European or native honeybees . Not them .

There are no more "pure bees" in Texas anymore and haven't been for years. All bees here have an Africanized gene in one form or another in the colony. The hot gene (the mean gene) hasn't been bread out but it's not as bad as it once was. But yes, the hot bee colonies are still out there. Besides the Africanized bees being mean they have lots of good traits. And besides having them DNA tested there is no way to tell the level of the Africanized gene in the colony.

I had a colony in my front yard last year that were underground. We had cut down a fruitless Mulberry tree 3 years ago and burned the stump. We had put dirt over it and have grass growing. They found a hole about the size of a nickel down beside a root. They wouldn't let my wife go in the yard for anything and they went crazy when I started my riding lawn mower. I thought they were Italian honey bees but a bee keeper friend of mine said they weren't. He wouldn't take them to put with his 5 hives. Even though I didn't want to we finally had to kill them.

Is there a reliable bee removal company around The Colony. I just noticed that I have bees swarming around one of the eves on my house