Are they still yellow and black (or similar?) We have small leafcutter bees here, but they don't have hives, they cut leaves (sweet clover is their favorite), and plug every hole they can find with it.. The especially like the ground pin hole in electrical receptacles, pieces of 1/4" hose, and stuff like that. they can sting, and you do know you got stung, but it's not bad. Perhaps they are a relative? the size is right.
I have seen one "Horse guardian" hornet here, it was under the irrigation and wet and cold, I picked it up and let it dry off, got some pictures,.. d*mn that thing was big, it could reach all the way around my thumb.. I put it on top of a fence post and was able to see it from about 150 feet away. we have probably about 30-50 different species of wasps and bees around here, most of them we like, but we hate the yellow jackets that are always around your food, and are always pesky. Most of the types we have are spider wasps, and we got all sorts, the smallest I've seen was about 1/8" long, all the way up to about 1 1/2"... the biggest type we have loves onion and mint flowers, is fearsome looking, and I certainly wouldn't want to pizz one of them off, but they really keep to themselves, just sucking nectar from flowers. As for bees, a bit less in variety, but some stunningly beautiful ones, mostly solitary, but we have one type that is a *bright* metallic blue, and another an equally bright metallic green.. I'd like to know more about them to be able to provide habitat for them
Edit.. Yellowjackets are actually useful around cattle, *usually*. They will catch and eat flies, however, if the flies have made sore spots on the cows, they'll go there too sometimes. Last year we had an infestation of little tiny hunchback flies that were on the cattle by the thousands, and bit like a SOB... It was the yellowjackets that cleaned them up.
