Natural Bee Repellents for Home and Garden
Natural Bee Repellents for Home and Garden Bees are essential pollinators that play a crucial role in our ecosystems. However, having them swarm too close to your living spaces can be inconvenient or even dangerous, especially if someone in your household is allergic to bee stings. Instead of resorting to harmful chemicals, you can use natural and eco-friendly methods to keep bees at bay without jeopardizing their survival.
Natural Bee Repellents for Home and Garden Here’s a guide to understanding natural bee repellents and how to use them effectively in your home and garden.http://climatechallange
Homemade Bee Sprays:
From essential oils to spices, homemade sprays have a long-standing reputation as natural bee repellents, but what works and what is safe?
Aside from citronella, other plants and their essential oils like lavender, eucalyptus, and lavender are great at repelling bees because of their strong scents. Bees have a much more developed sense of smell than humans do, which is why the smell of these essential oils drives them bonkers. They are harmless to bees, but bees would do anything to avoid the scent of them.
Similar to citronella, essential oils can be applied both indoors and outdoors in a variety of ways. You can either cultivate the plants in your garden or simply dab raw essential oils in places you do not want them to stay. You can also create a solution of essential oils and water and spray it all over. We promise that a small amount makes a big difference!
Spices:
Bees searching for flowers to pollinate are attracted to sweet smells. Hence, folk wisdom has long held that sprays containing the opposite—pungent odors like garlic, cinnamon, and lemongrass—will naturally repel bees. One common method requires an entire head of roasted garlic left in a spray bottle with distilled water, which is later sprayed on and around plants to overpower the smell of nectar. While there is some logic behind this idea, it has not been scientifically validated, so it may be better to focus on essential oil mixtures as a natural deterrent method.
Garlic and cinnamon in powder form can also be sprinkled at the base of plants and around the dirt. Be careful not to apply dried spices directly to bees, as that could be harmful (for you and the bee).
Why Choose Natural Bee Repellents?
Bees prefer to pollinate shallow tubular flowers with landing platforms and are generally more attracted to blooms with specific colors. Bees are generally more attracted to purple, blue, and yellow flowers
One way to naturally repel bees is to avoid certain types of blooms and opt for other plants. Keeping flowering plants away from open doors and windows also reduces the odds of a bee getting indoors. Here are some types of plants that are less likely to attract bees, while still offering plants for other pollinators.
Night Blooming Plants:
Pollinated by nocturnal pollinators such as moths and bats, these plants bloom when bees are less active, lowering the odds of an encounter. Examples include evening primrose, angel’s trumpet, and certain species of lily.
Red and Orange Flowers:
While bees are more attracted to plants with purple, blue, and yellow flowers, birds and butterflies are attracted to red, orange, and yellow. So, focusing on plants that bloom in red and orange could be good for birds, and less attractive to bees.
Plants With Dull Green or Brown Flowers:
These blooms are less likely to draw bees and are typically pollinated by flies, beetles, moths, and bats. Some hydrangea, zinnia, and carnation species are examples.
Trees and Ornamental Grasses:
Any kind of tree that does not have flowers, such as hemlock, oak, or birch pine, should not draw bees because bees generally shun flowerless plants.
Other Ways to Keep Bees Away:
There are several other techniques to naturally avoid bees, ranging from the clothes you wear to how you react when bees are nearby.
Stay Aware of Your Surroundings:
Before working outside, look around for bees and avoid using power tools or loud equipment when they are nearby, as it could aggravate them. If you persistently see bees in one location, there could be a nest in the vicinity. Hives and nests should always be removed by a professional.
Dress Appropriately:
In addition to avoiding fragrances and colognes, which in some situations may remind bees of nectar, wearing light colors like khaki, beige, and blue also helps to naturally repel bees.
Sliced Cucumbers:
Anecdotally, fresh sliced cucumber has deterred bees. Scientists are still studying this theory, but they believe that cucurbitacins, the bitter triterpenes common to all Cucurbitaceae plants like cucumber, are potent feeding deterrents for all insects not adapted to exploiting them. Cucumber plants themselves may actually attract bees, in part because their flowers are either male or female and cannot self-pollinate, meaning that they rely on insect pollination or hand pollination from gardeners.
Steer clear of chemicals, soaps, and mothballs.
Although experts currently advise against it, mothballs have also been employed in the past as a bee repellent. Nearly all of the active compounds in modern mothballs are present, and exposure can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, irritation of the eyes and nose, and coughing. The only safe way to utilize mothballs is in airtight containers.
Soap is not a safe bee repellent either, though it has been used since the 1800s for insect control. Some soaps have insecticidal properties which affect the nervous system of plant-eating insects. If you want to create your own soap mixture for the garden, do so with caution as homemade recipes may be toxic to plants. In addition, most household cleaners are detergents rather than true soaps, so you’ll likely do harm to plants and potentially to bees.
Above all, do not use chemical pesticides and herbicides to keep bees away from your garden and house. Apply insecticides at night or very early before pollinators become active if you need to control other plant pests. You may also ask your local agricultural extension agents what kinds of bees are in your area and what products will affect them.