Summer in Orlando means plenty of barbecues, afternoons by the pool, and all sorts of other outdoor activities. It seems like any time you or your family wants to do something outside, especially if it involves food, bees and wasps turn up to crash your party.
4 Tips for Keeping Bees and Wasps at Bay This Summer
1. Dryer Sheets
Bees and wasps hate the smell of a dryer sheet and will stay far away from it. Spread a few sheets around your back patio or wherever you’re having a get-together to keep the area pest-free.
2. Mothballs
Much like the dryer sheet approach, bees and wasps hate the smell of mothballs. While they may be designed to kill moths in an enclosed space, out in the open they’re perfectly safe to humans. Try tying a few up inside some cheesecloth or pantyhose to make a convenient repellant you can hang anywhere.
3. Brown Paper Bags
Most bees and wasps are very territorial. Take a brown paper bag, fill it with air, and twist off the top to make it resemble a bee or wasp nest. Hang the inflated bag in the area that you’ll be spending time, and no bees or wasps will come around.
4. Cloves
This pungent spice is another great bee and wasp repellent. The scent is offensive to them, so just spread some out on your back porch and enjoy a pest-free summer.
Bees and wasps are an important part of our ecosystem, but it’s also important that they stay a safe distance away from you and your family. If you’ve seen bees or wasps flying around your property, there may be a nest nearby. Give the experts at Critter Control® of Orlando a call today at 407.295.7194 to set up an inspection.
How to Tell if is a Bee or Wasp?
You just got stung and it hurts really bad! Did you see if it was a bee that stung you? but wait, was it actually a bee? It may have been a wasp. Now you’re confused. How do you know which one it was? What can you use to properly identify the culprit if it happens again?
Bees and wasps not only look different, but they have different behaviors and live different lifestyles. If you are aren’t sure which of these two insects gave you that painful sting, pay attention to the differences in looks and behavior to help with identification.
10 Reasons Why Bees Matter
Most folks know that bees are an important part of our ecosystem, but notmany know just how critical they are to almost every aspect of our daily lives. It’s important to understand why bees shouldn’t be feared and killed, but rather appreciated and protected. Here are just 10 ways in which bees matter to us:
- Honey bees are the only known insect that produces food edible to humans.
- Honey and beeswax have been used in foods, medicines, preservation, and rituals dating all the way back to ancient Egyptian times.
- It’s estimated that cross-pollination from bees helps 30% of food crops and a whopping 90% of wild plants to grow. Without bees, most plant and animal species would go extinct.
- In the United States alone, bees pollinate about $15 billion worth of crops each year.
- Bees produce around $150 million in honey alone, every year in the US. Bees are more important to the economy than most people know.
- In the last decade, almost 1/3 of all honey bee colonies in the US have been destroyed due to a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This is caused by a combination of global warming, loss of habitat, overuse of pesticides, and inadequate food supply.
- A single worker bee only produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in their entire lifetime.
- To produce a pound of honey, nearly 800 bees have to fly over 55,000 miles and pollinate 2 million flowers.
- A typical bee colony is made up of about 20,000-60,000 bees, and just one queen. All worker bees are female and only live for about 6 weeks.
- While a bee sting might hurt a bit, there’s no reason to be afraid. It would take about 1,100 stings to endanger an average-sized human.
It’s hard to believe that such a small insect can have such a big impact on the world we live in, but it’s important that we do everything we can to protect them and help them thrive. If you have bees on your property that are too close for comfort, the pest control experts at Critter Control® of Orlando can relocate them safely.
