If you have fruit trees or a garden, you might want to make a carpenter
bee roosting (actually, egg-laying) board with straws instead of just
killing them off. They're the best pollinators you can have, and
really, really not much on stinging you, much less so than regular
honeybees, wasps, etc. There are all sorts of kits available online.

Fire ants, though, I can't tolerate. I'm terribly allergic. I try to be
really careful to make SURE they're fire ants - red, tiny, or red and
black halved and tiny - before treating the mounds. The regular old
solid-black ants (remember those?) if left alone will claim territory
and help to keep the fire ants out, as long as you don't poision the
good ant mounds.

I'm a chemical engineer and a gardener, so I prefer going the
lowest-impact route. A solution of orange oil, a few tablespoons
molasses, and a 2-3 gallons of BOILING water poured on a mound (you can
add a few drops of dish soap, too) has never failed to kill a fire ant
mound for me. Amdro HAS failed a few times, requiring a second-dose,
etc. Depends on if you can safely carrry the boiling water.

It does leave a small patch of dead grass, sometimes, but that quickly
goes away - and the molasses actually acts as a fertilizer, so your
grass will come back even better than before - and no poison in the
ground!

Samatha