Bees

What Keeps Bees Away Outside? Remove the Attraction First

Most bees at a table are after sugar or meat — and the ones after meat are wasps. What actually works outdoors, and what to leave alone.

By Zakaria September 22, 2026 3 min read Save to Pinterest

A common wasp, smooth and narrow-waisted, feeding on spilled honey on a plate — Photo: Gundula Vogel, Pexels License, via Pexels

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Before anything else: the insect at your table is probably not a bee. That one correction changes both the answer and the stakes.

The short answer

Almost anything hovering around food, drink or a bin outdoors is a yellowjacket wasp, not a bee — bees want nectar and pollen and have no interest in meat or beer. What works is removing the attraction: covered drinks, lidded bins, cleared fallen fruit, a wiped table. Peppermint, clove, lemongrass and citronella help slightly and briefly, and cannot compete with an open can of something sweet. Late-summer aggression is a colony cycle, not bad luck: once the queen stops laying, adult wasps lose their sugar supply and go looking for yours.

It is probably a wasp. Bees do not want your burger
Remove the sugar. Covered drinks, lidded bins, cleared fruit
Scent repellents are marginal and need constant reapplying
Late summer is a colony cycle, not bad luck
Never spray a honey bee swarm. Ring a beekeeper — usually free

Bee or wasp

The identification that decides everything

	Bee	Wasp
Body	Round, furry	Smooth, shiny, narrow waist
Legs	Thick, often pollen-laden	Thin, dangle in flight
Wants	Nectar and pollen	Meat, sugar, your drink
At a barbecue	Almost never	Constantly
Sting	Once, then dies (honey bee)	Repeatedly
What to do	Leave it alone	Manage the food

Carpenter bee, bumblebee, honeybee and yellowjacket compared side by side, with the shape, nesting habit and behaviour of each labelled — Four insects people call bees. Only the last one — the yellowjacket — is the one at your table.

This matters beyond pedantry. Bees are in trouble and are doing work your garden depends on, and almost every “bee problem” at a table is a wasp problem wearing the wrong name.

What actually works

In order of effect:

Covered drinks. Cans and open glasses are the single biggest draw — and a wasp inside a can is how people get stung in the mouth
Lidded bins, kept away from where you sit
Clear fallen fruit promptly. Windfalls under a tree are a wasp magnet by September
Wipe the table between courses; clear plates rather than leaving them
Serve, then close things up rather than leaving a spread out
Move the eating area away from bins, compost and fruit trees

A decoy plate works better than a repellent

Put something sweet or meaty well away from the table, upwind. Wasps find the easier food and stay there. It is the same logic as a trap crop, and it costs nothing.

What barely works

Essential oils — peppermint, clove, lemongrass, citronella, eucalyptus. Real but weak and short-lived; needs reapplying constantly and loses to any actual food
Fake nests. Some basis in territoriality, poor and inconsistent results in practice
Traps. They do catch wasps and they also attract more, so keep them at the far end of the garden and never on the table
Swatting. Actively harmful — a crushed wasp releases an alarm pheromone that recruits others

Why late summer is worse

Not coincidence, and worth understanding because it tells you when it ends:

Spring and summer: workers hunt insects to feed the larvae
In return, the larvae secrete a sugary fluid the adults feed on
Late summer: the queen stops laying, the larvae are gone, and that sugar supply ends
The adult workers are now unemployed and craving sugar — which is when they find your table
It stops at the first hard frosts

Nests

Honey bees — call a local beekeeper. A swarm is usually collected free, and should never be sprayed
Bumblebees — leave it. Small colonies, gone by autumn, nest never reused
Wasps, well away from foot traffic — leave it to die out naturally in autumn
Wasps near a door, path, or in a wall cavity — a pest controller, not a ladder and an aerosol

Common questions

What keeps bees away outside?

Removing what they came for, which is almost always sugar. Covered drinks, lidded bins, cleared fallen fruit and a table wiped down between courses do more than any repellent. Strong smells help at the margins — peppermint, clove, lemongrass and citronella are the ones with some evidence — but they are weak against a food source and need constant reapplication. The one thing that genuinely repels is distance from the attraction.

Are they actually bees?

Usually not. An insect hovering around a barbecue, a beer or a bin is almost certainly a yellowjacket wasp: bees eat nectar and pollen and have no interest in meat, and they are far less inclined to investigate people. The quick test is the body — bees are rounded and furry with thick legs, wasps are smooth, shiny, narrow-waisted and bright. It matters because the solutions are different and because bees should be left alone.

What smells do bees and wasps dislike?

Peppermint, clove, lemongrass, citronella, eucalyptus and, for wasps specifically, strong vinegar. The honest picture is that these work briefly and locally: they reduce interest in a small area for a short time, evaporate quickly, and are easily outcompeted by an open can of something sweet. Treat them as a marginal gain on top of removing the food, never as a substitute for it.

Why do wasps get aggressive in late summer?

Because their colony's job changes. Through spring and summer wasps hunt insects to feed the larvae, and the larvae in turn feed the adults a sugary secretion. In late summer the queen stops laying, that supply ends, and the adult workers are suddenly unemployed sugar addicts with nothing to do. That is exactly when they start appearing at picnics and bins, and it lasts until the first hard frosts.

Does a fake wasp nest work?

Barely. The idea is that wasps avoid a rival colony's territory, and there is some basis to it for a few species, but in practice results are poor and inconsistent — wasps readily nest within sight of one. Water traps and sugar traps do catch wasps, but they also draw more in, so they belong well away from where people sit, never on the table.

What should I do about a nest?

For honey bees, call a local beekeeper — a swarm is usually collected free and should never be sprayed. For bumblebees, leave it: colonies are small, short-lived, die out by autumn and are not reused. For wasps, a small nest well away from foot traffic can be left until it dies out naturally in autumn; a nest near a door, in a wall cavity or above a path is one for a pest controller rather than a ladder and an aerosol.

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