Growing in the front of my town house, right next to our stoop, are two beautiful, tall, currently blooming Holly Trees. With the blooming, however, has come the bees. There are tons of them and of all varieties. I’d hate to have to kill them but it seems almost too dangerous just to come in our front door. My wife is freaking out!!
Anyway I can discourage them from our Trees?
If I must kill them, what can I use? I don’t want to hurt the trees, can I spray something on them?
Or should I wait them out? How long will my trees be blooming?
Bees usually won’t bother you if you don’t bother them. For you the trees and blossoms are simply decorative, for them they are necessary food. Leave them be.
I agree with astro. Bees only sting in self-defense, or to defend their hive. They won’t sting unless absolutely necessary, since most species of bee will die shortly after stinging. If one lands on you, the thing not to do is swat at it or try to brush it off. It’ll fly off on its own shortly, after all, you’ve got nothing it wants.
A. I am highly allergic to stings so am somewhat prejudiced on the subject but have also done a good bit of research as well.
B. I have a wonderful wife who is an avid gardener of many beautiful flowers and we have 4 flowering Hollies.
C. You have reminded me to update my “epipen”.
MOST bees and wasps will just leave you alone. “White Faced Hornets” (Vespula maculata) will attack anything that moves and have some of the most toxic venom of any vespid. If these “B-52” style bombers come after you from the Holly, run. Find their nest ( http://www.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/grownet/insect-pests/wasps.htm ) and soak it in the strongest wasp spray available in your area at sunset from as far a distance as possible then run indoors. BTW they seem to love Holly trees.
As far as the others go we may not always see our actions as “aggressive” as the “bee” does. Brushing against one, stepping on one in bare feet, washing our bodies in sweet smelling soap then rejecting their curiosity and, it seems, sometimes a casual stare seems to be misinterpreted and open one up to attack!!
Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate these wonderful creatures role in production of things I love to eat and look at but instead of spending some of the money on a cure for X, Y or Z or some bombs couldn’t we find an alternative way to pollinate and eliminate these b*****ds?
Our new house has one of the biggest holly trees I had ever seen, and I wasn’t familiar with them. The blooms lasted for about 2 weeks total, and several types of bees swarmed it from dawn to dusk. We have a beekeeper about a mile away, sells honey, so that may have been a part of the answer. A few wasps were there also, so thanks for the reminder to look for their nests!
Not being allergic, we just enjoyed watching them. Never a problem, even walking through the swarms. Hmm.
I think we should ask for a cut of the honey business, or at least a freebie HoneyBear, or two.
I have been a beekeeper for 25 years. Bees forage for nectar all over the place, holly trees bloom early so they like them best. They need a strong flow of nectar and pollen to build the population of the hive in preparation of the new season. They need a strong population to collect enough nectar to make honey to survive another year. Bees foraging do not sting, they don’t care about you. A bee, foraging, might sting you if you crush it but that’s doubtful. Wasp’s generally sting people and they call them bees not caring to differentiate. Unless you are mowing grass near a beehive or something else that would annoy them, you are unlikely to be stung by a honeybee.
Quick note in the fight against ignorance: About 9 billion dollars’ worth of crops are pollinated in the United States each year. (The Beekeper’s Handbook, Diana Sammataro) Like cucumbers?
Alas, most of the wild honeybees in my area have vanished. At my last house, my next door neighbor also had a huge holly. Every year the blooming tree would practically vibrate with the ministrations of thousands of honeybees. The last few years I lived there, their numbers were reduced to near zero. Sure, other kinds of bees, and wasps and hornets were still in evidence, but not actually seeing honeybees just took away a simple pleasure. Perhaps the population decline is cyclical, but from all I’ve read I don’t believev so. Imported mites are the culprit in this case. The honeybees are unable to recognize them, or fight them off. Mother Nature may have already heard the allergics plea and controlled the wild honeybee population. Beekeepers must keep a watchful eye on their hives, or they too will be out of business. It’s always such a pain to hear folks lump honeybees with their larger, less industrious and poorer-pollinating relatives. If agriscience could come up with a way of pollinating plants better and more cheaply than using honeybees, they’d do it. Still wanna’ carve that pumpkin at Halloween, eat an apple pie, put raspberries on your cornflakes? Then thank the honeybees.Most folks allergic to beestings know to carry appropriate medical supplies, and should know that an unprovoked bee is usually no problem. Knowledge, a bit of patience and a live and let live approach can help alleviate this situation.
Well quiltguy, I hate to tell you, but the decline in the population of honeybees, apis mellifera mellifera, is not cyclical but due to the infestation of mites. First there were the varroa mite which attach themselves to the thorax of the bee and suck the blood, then there is the tracheal mite which lives in the breating tubes of bees. These two parasites have just about eliminated beekeeping in America. In 1992 I personally had 25 hives then mites moved in and now I have one. It’s just too hard for a hobbyist to stay on top of them. It is a critical problem in agriculture today. I have hope that honeybees will develop a resistance to these pests and rebound. There is hope, bees propogate readily, prior to thge 1600’s honeybees were unknown in North or South America. They were brought to this hemisphere by Europeans.