In all seriousness, I’m a great believer in interfering as little as possible and letting nature find its own balance. Ladybirds and their larvae are great at killing aphids etc. There’s no point in doing anything, just wait for the ladybirds to arrive and do the job for you. They aren’t going to go where there is no food, so there need to be some pests around in order to attract them - one doesn’t after all go to a restaurant where there is not food.
I’m a lazy gardener and I have too much garden, so I’d rather someone else did the work for me. 
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I manage to keep carpenter bees away using bitter almond essential oil. Maybe that would deter other insects?
I mix 1 part bitter almond oil to 6 parts in grapeseed oil as a carrier and use a dropper to add this every few days to felt pads stuck on the wooden beams of our pavilion.
The carpenter bees had made nests there before we bought the property and return each spring. I din’t want to kill them, just request that they move their crêche to our neighbour’s garage.
Works well. Bees arrive and quickly leave without drilling. Bitter almond oil smells lovely tk humans. (Just wash your hands after using because it’s a bit toxic.).
N.B. Bitter almond essential oil is not the same as sweet almond oil. More than you will ever need to know about almond all may be found here
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Why do you want to?
They drill holes into old wood (i.e. beams and shutters) in which to lay their eggs and return to feed them. The holes and tunnels they create undermine the strength of the wood, especially bad for load bearing beams. Increasingly dangerous over time because the bees return to
their place of birth to create new generations.
You’ll know if you have them because they make really neat perfect holes about ¼ inch diameter.
Here is a quite fun read.
The loud music option may have been what the previous house occupants went with, according to our neighbours. We prefer the olfactory method.
Movie time
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Gendarmes (firebug, push me pulls or Pyrrhocoris apterus) we have millions of them everywhere 
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Today is World Bee Day, apparently
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Yes!!! Those are the ones… red with black on as opposed to @toryroo 's which are black with red on. Are they any kind of a problem?
They are great for the garden
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OH just went to water the tomatoes but the watering can has a tree frog 
in it at the moment. She didn’t like to disturb it… 
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We have tree frogs that sit underneath our drain pipes. I’m firmly convinced they choose such places because they act like an echo chamber and the frog’s croak sounds more impressive.
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They’re the "gendarmes ", harmless little bugs
They are amusing so I just leave them! I leave the ground dwelling bees as well although they are playing havoc with my crops. Because we sow/plant through landcaping fabric, the little chaps make a “beeline” for the nice friable patches and burrow around in them.
However, I prefer them to the cats who have found the nice patches of recently-sown earth to be perfect for making a scrape and pooing on top of, albet a little small, but needs must when there are dozens of cats competing fot pooing rights in our garden 
Have you tried scattering orange peel or mandarin peel around to dissuade the cats ? Someone recommended it on here and we get feral cats heading for our gite lawn where they mark territory - not great for our gite guests. I noticed the smell a few weeks back and have been scattering broken up small bits of mandarin peel around ever since - no more smell I’m pleased to say.
Haven’t tried that, @SuePJ - will give it a go! We have a serious problem with cats - the elderly cat that adopted us a few years ago is horribly bullied by the young upstarts! We made him a little hut by the house door so that he could sleep in there out of the rain if he decided to go out at night, but one morning when I opened the shutters, I found 3 cats shooting out of the hut and one totally soaked elderly one crying to come in. We’ve blocked the hut to all-comers now…
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We have loads of carpenter bees. When we moved into our house, there was a pile of old, some rotting wood in the corner of the garden. I was thinking of clearing it when the neighbour told us that it was for the carpenter bees. If you give them a good home, they will use it and not bother your beams. I’ve checked ours a few times and no sign of holes 
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Do you want to borrow Syd?
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I imagine he could have great fun 
Perhaps we’d have to clear of few of their bramble hiding places first though as he’s a bit big 
