Looking for an insecticide that is safe for honey bees

Thread title says it all. I need to kill ants, roaches, spiders, and fleas in my home and yard. However, we have numerous bee hives and I don’t want to harm the honey bees. I have tried diatomaceous earth for the past few months, but the bugs are still here. Someone recommended EcoVia, but I looked it up and it says it kills bees. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Best of luck finding something that fits your needs. I’m very happy with the flea control product I’m using on our three dogs, but my gf was concerned about it killing bees. I told her to find an equally efficacious alternative and we could switch. She searched and was unable to find an alternative. This was 2 years ago.

Why are you trying to kill spiders in the yard?

They’re beneficials.

And you’re not going to have a “bug” free yard that nevertheless supports honeybees. A healthy system is going to include more than one such species.

Get some chickens - they’ll eat any insects they can get their beaks on, but will learn pretty quickly to not mess with the bee hives.

If you have ants in the house, put out some ant bait. There’s similar products for cockroaches. But I agree with thorny locust, don’t try to kill everything outside. (Personally, I don’t even kill spiders inside, much less outside.)

Not gonna happen. That is like asking for a poison that kills fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals but not humans. A poison that kills a wide evelotionary tree with deep ancestory (the last common ancestor of insects and arachnids is hundreds of millions of years older than the LCA for all tetrapods) isn’t going to make exceptions.

I should have been more clear: I want ALL of those critters out of my house. The ONLY ones I want out of the yard are the FLEAS. California had an insane amount of rain over the past year, which has resulted in a crazy, never before seen (at least by me) amount of wild flowers & butterflies (yay!) and also biting insects (boo!). Our yard is literally crawling with fleas. Our dog is treated with an oral medication (triflexis) which kills fleas when they bite her, but they still jump on her and she brings them into the house, and before I know it, my house is infested. I’ve had my carpets and floors treated (with chemicals, since the bees don’t come inside) twice already (in May, then just last week). But they are still everywhere in the yard and every time someone walks outside they are attacked and bitten by the fleas. I react strongly to them and my ankles are covered with little red marks. We cannot enjoy our yard at all. I have covered the lawn with diatomaceous earth being careful to avoid the hives and areas they frequent… but it’s just no match for this flea infestation. And they will inevitably end up back in the house again. Am I really SOL?? Sweet Jesus do I need a solution :frowning:

p.s. And we already have chickens, but they aren’t eating the fleas :frowning:

I’m not sure if this will work, as I’ve seen it nowhere else than my own experience; and it won’t work fast if it does work: but you might try planting a lot of catnip.

I have lived multiple places with indoor-outdoor cats. In all the places that had catnip growing outside, I had little or no flea problem. In the couple of places with no catnip, flea problems. I had one long-haired cat who was absolutely flea ridden if not treated when we lived somewhere with no catnip; but she had no fleas when she could sleep in a catnip patch.

I doubt dried catnip will work; if it did, I think this would be well known. It probably has to be growing, or at least fresh cut.

you could also try nematodes. Allegedly nematodes love flea eggs and larva and can make a huge dent in outdoor flea populations.

Ladybugs will eat fleas too but as I understand it, they are less effective, but will find larvae and eggs too.

(fun tip for ladybugs) spritz them lightly with sugar water. it mucks up their wings for a while keeping them from holding a mass exodus for a week or two.

Which is why I do not use one of the oral flea control products. Unfortunately, what is effective for flea control IME is not safe for bees.

Nematodes may be problematic for bees: A new threat to bees? Entomopathogenic nematodes used in biological pest control cause rapid mortality in Bombus terrestris - PMC

That’s a native species though.

And a ground-nesting one at that.

The problem is, of course, that bees are insects.