We just moved into a new rental home, and there’s a big, beautiful honeysuckle tree in the backyard, hanging over 1/3 of the back pporch. There are hundreds (?) of bees buzzing around it. I don’t see a hive, so I think they just love that tree. They don’t seem confrontational at all. But we plan on grilling a lot this summer, and playing around the backyard in general.
Any suggestions on how to live peacefully with them? Will the smoke from the grill make the bees angry?
You don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. Unless these are Africanized Honey Bees. In that case, nuke them from orbit …
wtf ever. I do not stand bees. At all. If I see a bee, I kill it if possible. There have been a couple of aggressive angry fuckers in my apartment complex and I’m just not having it. For me, bee sting = severe allergic reaction.
F that.
If it was just a bee or two, I’d probably work to get rid of them. But there are so many, and bees are so important in the grand scheme of nature, that both Mr. Smaje and I decided it’s best if we learn to live with them.
CitizenPained – how did you find out you’re allergic to bee stings? Baby Smaje is nearing 7 months old, and I’d hate to discover she’s allergic to bee stings. I’ve been stung by a few bees in my life, and the fear of being stung was always a million times worse than the actual pain. But that’s one bee compared to the possibility of *hundreds *of bees…
I’m no expert but it’s been my experience that the smoke will actually keep them away. It would be an interesting experiment to grill every day and see if you can “train” them to stay away.
And what do you have to lose - you’re grilling every day! It’s win-win!
If I were you, I’d talk to an exterminator, and have him come and look for a hive. It might be that the bees are just interested in the honeysuckle. If they are living nearby, however, it’s important to find out before you accidentally blunder into it.
As for living with them, it is mostly just respecting their boundaries. Clean up any fruit and fruit juice that might spill. Don’t wear honeysuckle perfume if you plan to sit on that porch. Don’t swat them or freak out if the try to check you out. They don’t want you - they want flowers and fruit juice. If they sting you, they die, so they don’t want to do that. They’ll buzz over and look at you sometimes but if you don’t bother them, they’ll go away again.
bees do protect their hive and themselves. just being near them or their near you is not necessarily a danger. they are attracted to tree blossoms not you.
smoke does calm bees.
I stepped on one when I was about five or six. 
Keep the Babe away from bees. That’s the last thing you want to worry about, especially since babies seem to be allergic to more stuff than adults. They don’t even recommend honey until 2 years of age.
I have a honey bee tree just a few feet from my barn (no sign of Pooh, though). I have honeysuckle and all kinds of wildflowers. In the 8 years I’ve lived here, I’ve only been stung one time, although I see a lot of bees. I leave them alone, although I sometimes fish them out of the horses’ water trough, since they’ll drown. I’m pretty much live and let live with nature. The only things I’ll actively kill are flies and rattlesnakes in the yard.
StG
I planted lavender to attract butterfly’s and bees. Helps to feed them. I get several big bumble bees a day. Fuzzy guys the size of my pinky finger.
I try to ignore the bees. Walk by and go about my business. If one investigates I stop and don’t move until it leaves.
They hang around the rhododendrons when they are in bloom, but that’s only for a few weeks. They’re too busy feeding to care about anyone else. Blackjack is a mighty bee hunter and snaps them out of the air when he can. There’s also a few carpenter bees always looking to drill into my house. They can be more aggresive. One of them buzzed me one time and Blackjack chased him across the yard. He doesn’t like anyone messing with his best friend.
The hive may be inside the tree.
In general, bees aren’t aggressive towards people, but you should identify where the hive is and keep your distance from it. They will protect their nest, and the stings also release an alarm pheromone, which provokes further attacks. I guess the hive is either in the tree or close by, it’s not desirable to have one very close to a home. Can you see where they are flying to? It might be worth contacting a local beekeeper about the possibility of having them moved. Swarms are fairly easy to capture, but I’m not sure that applies to an entrenched hive. Please avoid extermination if at all possible, bees are ecologically important, as they pollinate plants. They are also fascinating, they have some very clever tricks to co-ordinate their behaviour.
My parents kept three hives of bees about 40 feet from the house while I was growing up, and they were never a problem. My dad was stung several times while working the hives, but no-one else in the family ever was.
There was one time I found about 30 bees buzzing around my bedroom. Prior to swarming, they send out scouts. When a scout find a promising location, it returns to the hive and performs a variation on the waggle dance, indicating the location to other scouts. The scouts then check out each other’s proposed nest sites, until a concensus is reached. It looks like my bedroom was on the short-list for a while. Note that none of this requires any individual insect to have any understanding of what it is doing, or to have any memory of the different locations it has visited. Each scout follows a simple set of instructions, then dumps it’s information back at the colony, where it is propagated by other bees taking up it’s dance. For a while, there will be several competing dances, each indicating a different set of co-ordinates. Eventually, one target location will come to dominate, and the colony will swarm.
Just a thought, but have you checked none of your neighbours keep bees? Worth asking, people often try and keep the hives hidden.
And smoke should calm them: even if it doesn’t, if you don’t bother them, and they’re not hyper agressive africanised bees, they’ll probably ignore you, and clear off when the tree stops flowering.
Seconded on the whole “live and let live”. Bees are already in enough trouble with colony collapse disorder, they don’t need my help killing them off. I’ve planted a lot of bee friendly plants in my yard, and if the bees are busy, I do my yard work in a different section of the yard. I also have honeysuckle (mine are vines) and the bees don’t hang around those nearly as much as they do the shrubby st. johns wort. My MIL called those “bumble bee bushes” and I agree - they are always covered in bees.
Wasps, however, they must die. Die die die.
This is due to the risk of botulism, and not for allergy-related reasons, FYI.
Get yourself a pet bear.
I’ve been stung once in my life, when I stepped on the poor little bugger. When I was a kid, we used to catch bees barehanded - never got stung.
Pretty much, they’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone. Stand still if one is buzzing you; it’ll wander off. Smoke will either calm them down or run them off, so don’t worry about the grill.
To avoid attracting them, don’t wear perfume or bright colors while you’re outside.
If you do decide that they’re too much hassle, call around for a bee-keeper. They can remove the hive safely and relocate it.
We’ve got bushes on either side of our front door that the bumblebees love, so we walk right by them (and I mean right by them - no more than a foot or two away) every day during the warm part of the year. We’ve been in this house for a dozen years, and have never been stung by them, nor have we ever felt like any of them was trying to sting us.
I don’t know what sort of bees you’ve got, but if they’re bumblebees, just relax. I’m not sure what you’d have to do to rile a bumblebee enough to sting you, but the usual homeowner stuff - trimming the bushes they’re buzzing around, jostling the bushes when mowing around them, inadvertently spraying them with the hose when hosing down the front walk - none of that stuff has gotten a rise out of them. They’re really quite peaceful critters.
I have never been stung by my pet bee Eric.