Huge wasp identification please

[forensicfleabag]

Can anyone please help us identify this beauty we have found in our garden?
We live in NW England.

I think it’s a carpenter bee.

Definitely a carpenter bee.

Is that a white spot or just reflected light?
It does look like a carpenter bee according to google.

It's a white stripe. He's been sat in the garden for about half an hour.

It hasn't got the fuzzy texture described for carpenter bees which made us doubt that?

The white stripe isn’t on any of the pictures of carpenter bees in my book but it’s otherwise identical to a female violet carpenter bee.

Have you googled to see if there is a bee expert in your area? We have one here and he kindly came round to look at the leaf cutter bees living in the brickwork of my house. He is known simply as the Bee Man. (Hertfordshire).
That creature looks extraordinary. I have never seen anything like it.

@porridgecake

Have you googled to see if there is a bee expert in your area? We have one here and he kindly came round to look at the leaf cutter bees living in the brickwork of my house. He is known simply as the Bee Man. (Hertfordshire). That creature looks extraordinary. I have never seen anything like it.

That's a good idea, thanks. Couldn't work out how to do a Google reverse search, but when I've googled the description, it keeps coming up with four toothed black wasp (or something like that) and they don't live in uk by all accounts!?!

Ask on reddit www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisbug/
The people posting there are incredibly knowledgeable.

Reverse image search reckons it's an Elm Sawfly

www.alamy.com/stock-photo/elm-sawfly.html

Definitely an elm sawfly

Yes.
I tried reverse image and got nothing at all, but googling Elm Sawfly brings it up. I never heard of those!

Ooh brill, elm sawfly seems to be it! Thanks so much. Good to know it's not nasty!!!!

@forensicfleabag The elm sawfly Cimbex americana isn't native, I think it is the almost identical-looking Birch sawfly Cimbex femoratus which we do get in the UK.