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Published on 07/24/03

Terrific ideas about bees not always so hot

By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia

The idea seemed like a logical one at the time. I thought it just might work.

The problem the youth camp manager was facing was how to keep honeybees away from the trash cans at camp. The trash cans contained, not trash, but soft-drink cans with their sugary sweet residue inside.

So what's the big deal?

Well, a hundred or so kids at camp, tossing a couple hundred soft-drink cans into the trash cans every day, attracted hundreds of honeybees. If you think a kid wants to get near a trash can buzzing with bees, think again.

Bees busy

Were the kids threatened by the bees around the trash cans? No. The bees were too busy gathering food for the hive to be a threat unless a kid swatted at one or drank from a can that a bee had managed to get inside. Then they might be stung.

And that was what concerned the camp manager.

If the bees are so attracted to the sugar in the drink cans, he thought, why not put out a bait station some distance away, just for the bees, and attract them away from camp.

"Do you think that would work?" he asked.

"Well, it sounds like a good idea to me," I said. "But let me do a little research first."

Not necessarily

I've learned over the years that just because something sounds like a good idea doesn't necessarily mean it is.

And this one wasn't.

Keith Delaplane, a honeybee specialist with the University of Georgia Extension Service, told me a bait station placed to attract bees would only cause more bees to be attracted to the trash cans.

Now why is that?

A bee out scouting for food would fly back to the hive to tell the others it had found a new food source. But the other bees wouldn't necessarily get the whole message.

'Hey, guys!'

I can imagine the scout bee flying to the hive and announcing something like, "Hey, you guys! I found some new food. Come on!" and then flying back out before it told the others where the food was.

So the bees would fly out of the hive in a frenzy to intensify their food gathering, but go back to the only food source they knew: the trash cans.

Delaplane said honeybees don't communicate as precisely as scientists once thought. That "dance of the honeybee" may be just that: a dance. It may not be a code giving directions to the food source.

So what can the camp manager do? It's fairly simple. Remove the soft drink cans every day, keep the trash cans clean and covered and move them farther away from the kids' activities.

The same principles apply around your yard, too.

(Mike Isbell is the Heard County Extension coordinator with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)

Mike Isbell is the Heard County extension coordinator with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Experts/Sources:
Mike Isbell
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