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3 Tips for Keeping Bees Away From Your Home and Family

15th Nov 2015

Although spring and summer seem like distant memories now, the time when bees are buzzing and birds are singing will be here sooner than you know it. And while you and your family love to enjoy the outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air, having a colony of bees around your home can turn your outdoor oasis into a place of anxiety and fear. To help your family feel safe outdoors, here are three tips for keeping bees away from your home.

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Keep Your Property Free of Food

According to Terminix.com, bees—whether they be honey bees, bumble bees, or carpenter bees—are most often lured toward humans due to sweet, attracting smells. Some of the most common and strong smelling scents that can lure a bee to you are ice cream, soda and fruit or fruit juice. While it may seem a little much to suggest not ever eating these food items outside of your home, there are precautions you can take to minimize a bee’s ability to find your home by these scents.

To keep bees away from your home when you have sweet smelling items, Terminix suggests keeping the sweet smelling remnants of these foods in the garbage away from the home. Empty your trash cans regularly and keep lids on tight to make it difficult for bees to follow the scent to you and your home.

Use Organic Smells That Bees Don’t Like

Once you do find bees around your home, there are a few more natural ways you can attempt to get rid of the problem yourself before you call an exterminator to get the job done for you. These organic methods are likely to cause the bees less harm than other forms of eradication, which can be good because of our need for bees to pollinate.

One method for getting rid of bees, as suggested by Mike Matthews on SFGate.com, is to sprinkle garlic powder in outdoor areas around your home where you’ve seen bees gathering. The smell of the garlic powder is really offensive to bees and will help to keep them away from that specific area. Touching the garlic will also harm the bees, giving them more reason to steer clear.

If you, like the bees, don’t particularly like the smell of garlic, another option is to use citronella candles when you’re outside. Bees don’t like this scent either, but most humans don’t mind the smell of citronella. Citronella also won’t hurt bees the way garlic can, making that a more humane way to keep bees at bay.

Find the Right Time for Hive Removal

If you’ve found hives around your home, it’s best to remove them as soon as possible to avoid potential harm they can cause you and your family as well as your home’s structure. Pestkilled.com states that when planning to remove a bee hive, choose to complete the task at night when the bees are less active. Spray the hive with pesticides when it’s dark and leave the hive overnight. If there are still live bees coming from the hive the next day, spray the hive again to ensure you won’t get stung when moving the hive away from your home.

While bees are a necessary part of having a healthy planet, they could also cause your home and family extreme harm if there is an allergy or attack. To keep your family safe while working and playing outside and around your home, consider using one of the above tactics to rid your property of bees before any real damage can be done.

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