I did a little research after I posted. Here is what I found, "Bringing Mason bees from a different climatic region can present problems in two ways. Firstly, Blue Orchard Mason bees from lower latitudes (e.g. south Texas, which fly February to March) develop more slowly as they have a longer pre-pupal stages and require temperatures of at least 75 degrees to develop. If you transplant them to a cooler area some bees will fail to reach maturity. If you move Orchard Mason bees from higher latitudes (e.g. southern Canada, which fly April to May) to a warmer region they will mature before ambient temperatures start to decline and will have to use up body fat reserves until temperatures drop enough so they can enter hibernation. They will now be in a depleted state and may starve over winter or emerge in a weakened condition come spring."

Had great success with mine this year the box in this video was completely filled 3 weeks ago. Have one other I have made and that is 75% full. Here is a link that might be useful: Youtube

I have a house also and had to protect it with a "hail wire" cover to prevent birds from eating the bees. In GA you are probably okay leaving it on the porch through the winter. In colder areas, it is often advisable to move it to an unheated shed for the winter.

If you spray for carpenter bees, you will kill all the native mason bees you attract to your nesting spaces! So that is something huge to consider. If you have an out building that you do not spray, that might be a consideration - however you will probably still kill off that population. Now is the time to work on changing over your carpenter bee habits. Fill each hole with diatomaceous earth or borax. Then take a dowel and plug each hole up. That will stop new bees from emerging. Spraying in the holes will not totally eliminate the baby bees in there, only the first. There will be several in each hole. After you do that, then you can put up the bee houses for your carpenter bees. It really does work wonderfully well. Each fall, just take your Carpenter Bee houses down and clean out the tubes and kill the baby bees inside if you don't want them. Wash them well to remove bee fermones. Hang them again for next year. It's the existing fermones of baby bees that attract the new adult bees (and the babies also come back as adults) to lay more babies in your house. I had some good luck keeping the bees out by simply regularly washing my home and stopping up bee holes, and removing all mud dauber tubes (after hatching) and using this method for carpenter bees. We did get a lot of them when I moved here.