By Paul A. Thomas
University of Georgia
Bees are good. Fruit trees, farm crops and almost all native
plants depend on bees, our best pollinators, to reproduce. But
that doesn’t mean bees are welcome in everyone’s garden.
Some people (0.4 percent of the population) have serious allergic
reactions to bee stings. They’re always concerned when they see
any kind of bee.
Dozens of true bee species are in Georgia gardens. Most are small
and rarely sting. Or if they do, their stings are mild. In 15
years of developing butterfly and hummingbird gardens, I’ve never
been stung, nor have my active boys, despite being surrounded by
bees nine months of the year.
The bad guy
Most insect stings, though, aren’t from bumblebees or even
honeybees. The No. 1 culprit is the yellow jacket.
These ground-dwelling wasps are fairly aggressive scavengers.
They’re attracted to anything sweet or rotting. You can be in a
100-acre lawn with no flowers and still be stung by yellow
jackets.
Even then, these insects are only reacting to perceived threats
to their nests when they sting. They’re not out to get you.
Honeybees and bumblebees definitely have better things to do than
search you out. Following a few commonsense rules will keep your
chances of being stung in the garden tiny.
Sting prevention
Strong perfumes, for instance, may attract defensive insects if
you’re near their nests. Sometimes what you eat for breakfast can
attract a bee. The odor of banana, for example, mimics an alarm
chemical honeybees use to alert nest-mates to danger.
In the garden, keep three things in mind.
- Move slowly, especially near flowers bees are feeding on.
- Watch your hands. If you brush a bee off a flower, it may
instinctively cling to you. If you do nothing, it will almost
always fly off. This may require a minute or so of bravery. If it
stays on your shirt or skin, a slow brushing-off will usually do
the trick. Never try to hit, swat or pick off the bee. - Never go into a garden or lawn with bare feet. Stepping on a
honeybee in the clover is a common way to get stung.
Where the ‘bees’ are
Watch for insect nests, too. Bumblebees and yellow jackets rear
their young in shallow underground nests. Bumblebees prefer
grassy areas at the edge of woods or near large rocks. Yellow
jackets seem to like soft soil in the sun but protected by grass
or other small plants.
Look for insects flying back and forth in the same direction near
the ground. That’s almost always a sign that a colony is nearby.
You can grow plants that don’t attract stinging insects, too.
Whatever attracts hummingbirds and butterflies will attract scads
of bees. But don’t mow off the butterfly garden yet.
Many of the most attractive plants are natives. Joe Pye weed, for
instance, attracts wasps and yellow jackets like a magnet.
Monarda, Echinacea and even azaleas attract bees.
Many ornamental imports lure bees, too. Good examples are abelia
bushes, chaste trees (Vitex), butterfly bushes (Buddleia), hybrid
azaleas, and perennials and annuals such as Mexican sunflowers
(Tithonia), salvias, snapdragons, sedums and phlox.
The ‘wrong stuff’ to bees
Plants that don’t attract bees are less common. They include
cultivars of dianthus, geraniums, chrysanthemums, marigolds,
strawflowers, some zinnias and many roses.
We don’t yet have a long list of plants that don’t attract bees.
Much more research needs to be done. After a large University of
Georgia student project this summer, we hope to publish an
extensive list of garden plants that don’t attract bees or wasps
this fall.
You can help us out. Spend some time in the garden and send your
observations to Paul Thomas at
what plants bees don’t seem to visit. We’ll add them to the list
to be evaluated.
In the meantime, enjoy the bees.
(Paul Thomas is an Extension Service horticulturist with the
University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences. CAES entomologist Keith Delaplane also contributed to
this article.)
