If they're bees, they're not Bumblebees. They're more likely Carpenter Bees. The female Carpenter bee will bore a hole about the size you indicated, and about 3/8 to 1/2 inch deep into the wood. At that point, she'll turn 90 degrees and continue boring, parallel to the surface of the wood, for another couple of inches. Within this little wooden cave, she'll lay her eggs. On her way out, she'll seal the hole (to varying degrees) and leave. When her off-spring hatch, they'll bore their way out, leaving the hole open. There's many suggestions on how to keep them at bay and away from the house. The most often heard suggestion is paint. Unpainted wood is an easy target. There are those who swear by paint, saying that painted surfaces keep the bees away. I wouldn't know that from personal experience. The Carpenter bees around here don't seem to mind the paint at all. Try Googling for 'Carpenter Bees' and experiment with the methods of deterent you find. It can be a challenge. Haven't found one that works well, yet.

Cutting a house horizontally in half with different materials is a look best left to the production McMansions of the boom. If you are going to choose different materials to accent the build, you should choose elements to clad in it completely. And NEVER do "just the front" of the house in stone or brick with a cheaper material elsewhere. If you are going to use stone or brick, clad the entire box of the structure in that material. The expense of doing correctly like that is why most people choose one of a facade's bumpouts to use that material on and save the less expensive material for the main box. That is what your inpiration photo shows. The stone goes from bottom to top and is on the whole element to be accented, not cutting it in half.

From the photo. it looks as though the shingle siding just hasn't weathered yet. The siding was probably new within the last year. Give it some time and and the colour will soften. You can already see that the shingles down toward the bottom of the walls (where they're more exposed to the elements) are beginning to gray. If you like the naturally weathered look, just be patient. It will take 2 or 3 years for them to weather gracefully. If you're impatient, shingles can be painted or stained, but at this point, you'd probably have to power-wash them first to remove the staining that has started as a natural part of the weathering process. A tinted stain could then be applied to the cleaned shingles. If you choose to paint, a primer should be applied before paint. Personally, I prefer the look of naturally weathered shingles, so I'd be inclined go that route. Not only does it look better in my opinion, but it requires less maintenance.

Chris your inspiration house has a large proportion of the natural cedar color to the blue and a lot of what we can see on that house in the photo is in shadow which makes a big difference. You're trying to choose a color for your house without a clean background - the yellow is a player in making colors look different. I took a picture of 2 colors from one of my paint decks for you - put them on a table on our porch that is similar in color to your cedar but when I compare the picture to the paint deck it's horribly off so I hesitate to post it for you. I may email it but just know that it's not representational at all. I'm looking at Benjamin Moore Everard Blue CW-575 and Wetherburn's Blue CW-580. these are from their Williamsburg collection, grayed blues with green in them. Even on the B/M website the colors are off on my computer. I'm not certain these are the *right* colors for your house but it's a slightly different direction that brings your setting into the mix and a place to start. Hale Navy is part of the Historical Color collection from B/M - that collection is a good place to be as well. The colors are dirtier which is good - what you don't want is a bright, clear color on your house. There are different ways to approach trim and house colors - they can be high contrast with crisp definition or lower contrast and more subtle transition. Neither one is better, they are just different looks but your trim will still be differentiated from the house body with less contrast. Are you planning to paint your eves and rake boards like the inspiration house?