Our neighbors enjoy beekeeping as a hobby - but the honeybees have infested our pool/pool area! The neighbors are working with us and we've tried many things - vinegar, raising the chlorine level (it's a salt water pool), putting out extra water sources in the neighbors' yard (w our pool water)....but the bees are still a mess to deal with. The kids are afraid to swim sometimes. We do have a water feature/water fall that we're not even using as the bees really like the rock wall behind the water fountain. We need help!
Honeybees swarming around the pool - HELP!
- Thread starter jb4467
- Start date
Welcome to TFP!
What do you mean when you say that your neighbors are working with you? How are they working with you? This is a problem if your kids are afraid to go swim in their own pool. Your neighbors own the problem here and they must remedy it.
What do you mean when you say that your neighbors are working with you? How are they working with you? This is a problem if your kids are afraid to go swim in their own pool. Your neighbors own the problem here and they must remedy it.
You can't reason with bees.jb4467 said:
Once they lock onto a water source, they keep going back to it. Even if a new one is closer. If you covered your pool completely so they couldn't get to the water, they'd start looking for a new source and start using that. But you'd be unable to use your pool for a couple days until they gave up.
Interesting factoid: if you move a beehive, it has to be either less than 18" or more than a mile and a half. Move it four feet, and they'll fly to the old spot and look for it until they drop.
The beekeeper neighbor could try closing up the hive, driving it somewhere a couple miles away for a few days, then bring it back with his own waterfall water source set up right next to their new location and hope they latch onto it.
Bees are actually pretty interesting, and commercial honeybee breeds are not aggressive. They actually avoid stinging people because it means death for them. I've had bees land on me to get some of my sweat. I ignore them and they do their business and fly away. Start swatting at them or freak out and emit fear pheromones and they will probably sting you. Good luck teaching a kid not to freak out.
The last resort is to contact the city or county and have them cited for maintaining a public nuisance, but that would pretty much finish off any neighborly relations.