Pool Care Pool Lifestyle

How to Keep Bees and Wasps Away From a Pool

Almost everybody has some fear of bee or wasp terror. Bees and wasps enjoy their time in the summer when we all open our swimming pools. When they are around your swimming pool, you and your family are at risk of getting stung. And you know what, a bee or wasp sting can be lethal for anyone allergic to them. So, how do you keep bees and wasps away from your pool water?

Keeping bees and wasps away from your swimming pool isn’t that straightforward. However, there are multiple natural and chemical methods you can apply to push them away. You can also call a professional beekeeper to help. If you decide to interact with them directly, it’d be best to protect yourself with the right beekeeping gear.

The list of these methods is long, but they are all simple steps you can take to keep the bees and wasps away. If there are some in your or around your pool, this post will be of great help. I will discuss natural and chemical ways and emphasize why hiring a professional can help you. Read along.

What’s the Best Way to Keep Bees and Wasps Away From Your Pool?

With bees and wasps being part of our ecosystem, they play a crucial role in pollinating the plants to help them reproduce. And these plants are necessary for providing users with a stable food supply.

But since they are fragile insects, they have their protective mechanism, which is to sting anyone who seems a threat.

The best method to keep these insects away is the natural approach. Natural methods might not take effect immediately, but they can be effective in the long run.

According to research, bees are dying quite fast and in record numbers globally. If you kill a handful or a hive, you might be accelerating the problem. And as I mentioned, the bees are excellent at maintaining sustainable food production.

How to Keep Bees from a Pool Naturally

You don’t have to kill the bees to keep them away from your swimming pool. You can try these natural methods to keep your family safe while also maintaining our ecosystem.

Cover Your Pool

If you want to protect your swimming pool from a bee infestation, then you might want to cover it. Investing in a pool cover can limit access to the pool water no matter the cover type so long as it covers even the pool edges. The pool cover can also help keep ways other insects like the mosquitoes.

The best part is, apart from keeping the bees away, a swimming pool cover can help keep it clean and free of debris and dirt. What’s more, a pool cover can help retain heat, and a solar cover can help warm the pool water.

Give them another Water Source

Introducing an alternative water source for the bees can help keep them away from your swimming pool, especially if there’s a beehive nearby your property.

However, you’ll have to do this when your pool water is accessible, maybe after draining or installing a pool cover. You can install a bird bather or a bucket and ensure it stays with enough water all the time.

You can also get a trap bucket designed to trap insects and pour some sweet syrup into it to attract the bees and trap them in.

Remove Beehive from the Backyard

Do you have a beehive in your backyard? If you do, relocate it to a safer place away from your backyard. Remember to wear the ideal protective gear before removing the nest.

The process can cause the bees to relocate or die out. Whichever the case, it’s a necessary step to keeping you and your swimmers safe.

Clear the Flowers from Your Pool Area

Do you have flowers or flowering shrubs with a sweet nectar scent around your swimming pool? It might be the reason you have bees around your pool.

Transfer the plants away from the pool area. Also, ensure that you seal the trash cans you use around your home.

Plant Bee Repelling Shrubs

After moving the bee-attracting plants, you can replace them with bee-repelling shrubs. These plants have a specific scent that keeps these bees away. Examples are lemongrass, mint, and wormwood.

Take Advantage of Dryer Sheets

Dryer sheets act as a repellant. Their pungent smell, similar to lemongrass’ can help keep the bees away from your swimming pool.

Place some dryer sheets around the swimming pool and remember to replace them often since the smell wears off quickly.

Use Soap Solution as Spray

A household dishwasher or detergent is another product you can use to repel the bees from your pool. All you need is to add some detergent to warm water, mix it and transfer it to a spray bottle.

The detergent mix can help deter the communication between bees. It does also kill some in the process. You’ll need to spray for a few days until the bees stop visiting your pool area.

You can also spray it to the nearest hive when transferring it. But you should know, even though the spray kills the bees, it cannot cause damage to the beehive itself.

Use Vinegar

Bees don’t like the smell and taste of vinegar. By adding some in your pool water, it can help keep them away.

The unappealing taste will force them to find another water source. But remember, you might need to clean the pool once the insects are gone.

Drain Your Pool

If all the above solutions aren’t working, you can drain your swimming pool temporarily. Removing the water will force the bees to seek an alternative water source. Stay for around two weeks to break the bees’ flight pattern, and you can refill the swimming pool.

Call a Professional Beekeeper

If it’s becoming challenging for you to control the bees around your swimming pool, especially if there is a beehive in your backyard, calling a professional beekeeper can be the best action.

These guys are trained to help deal with bees and beehive relocation. They also have the necessary gear and tools needed for this kind of job.

How to Keep Wasps from a Pool Naturally

Wasps, unlike bees, are more stubborn and most of the best ways to keep them away result in death. What’s more, they are more dangerous than bees.

Their sting is more of a health hazard since they can sting you multiple times during their attack, but the bee stings once, and it dies. When a bee stings, the stinger gets stuck on the skin, ripping out its abdomen killing it.

And you know what, wasp don’t just seek water around a swimming pool; they might be seeking a new home too.

While the natural methods of driving bees away from your swimming pool might not work, here is a list of things you can try to keep the wasps away.

Use Wasp Traps

One way of keeping wasps away from your swimming pool is by setting up a wasp trap. All you need is to create a sugar-water solution or a sweet syrup and apply it on a wood or cardboard. The sweetness attracts the wasps, and the stickiness of the syrup traps them there.

Try Diesel Fuel

Like sugar solution, diesel attracts wasps. You can use it by adding some in a plastic bottle. Leave it open for them to get inside and drown.

Remember to grease the bottle inner side of the bottle to prevent them from crawling out. While using this method, make sure the bottle isn’t accessible to the kids and pets.

Wasps Nest Decoy

One thing wasps don’t like is living near other wasps territory. If you hanged decoy wasp nests around your backyard, it can help drive them away. But you’ll have to do it earlier in the season before they can start building their new nest. That way, you can mark the spot as already taken.

Raw Meat

Wasps’ best food is raw meat and can work perfectly in driving the wasps away by hanging some a distance from your swimming pool area.

And know this, wasps like feeding in other pests like aphids, flies, and centipedes, acting as nature’s natural pest control solution. At times they can also eat spiders and bees.

Not killing them can work in your favor if there are bees around your swimming pool. When you hang some raw meat on a wood away from the swimming pool, you can drive them and also allow them to help control other insects.

Try Chemical Solutions

If the bee and wasp problem becomes difficult for you to control with the natural methods, you can try some chemical solutions. When you use chemical-based repellants, it results in killing the bees and the wasps.

Try the best to can to make the use of insecticides as a last resort. It can be an excellent solution if you’re using it to keep your family safe from any potential bee or wasp attack. However, you’ve to check the liable and your local regulations on using insecticides.

You could try Pyrethroid-based insecticides with cyfluthrin that is very lethal to wasps and bees. However, this type of pesticide can be toxic to invertebrates and less toxic to mammals and humans.

Related Questions

Can bees kill you?

Yes. An average person can only tolerate ten strings per pound of the bodyweight safely. That would mean 500 stings can kill a child, and an adult might be killed by 1500 stings, depending on their body weight.

Is it true that when you kill a bee, you invite more to attack?

Yes. Apparently, if you kill a bee, it releases an ‘alarm scent’ to the nearby bees calling for some backup. If these bees feel threatened by the situation, they will activate their natural response and attack you to defend the queen.

Final Verdict

If your swimming pool is getting some new friends (bees and wasps) when you reopen in the summer, you got to try out the natural methods discussed above. Keeping them away will not only keep the swimming pool areas safe, but you’ll also be reducing the risk of multiplying.

About the author

Sharif Miah

Hi! I'm Sharif, the founder of Globo Pool® and I have been working in the pool & hot tub industry for the last few years. I love to share my experiences with people & hope you are enjoying my information and lessons!

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