Fruit trees and bees

[Powerflower]

The apple tress is my backyard has been dropping more apples than I can keep up with and the bees have noticed lol. They are buzzing around and creating a dangerous area for the pups. I know bees are very beneficial so I don't want to hurt them. I just don't want them to hurt the pups when they go outside to do thier business.

 

[maddie]

I live in a high rise building and bees have their hives all over the building. We have tried all kinds of stuff to get them off but only with short term results. They come back to the same spot to hang around :/
When my dog had puppies I had to use some innovate methods to get the bees off the area. I often used a newspaper nicely rolled up tight . When ever I need the puppies to go out I would sprayed the roll with water and light it up, put off the fire and just let it smoking. Bees seem to hate smoke or even the smell of it. They never came near my puppies.

 

[Jed]

The apple tress is my backyard has been dropping more apples than I can keep up with and the bees have noticed lol. They are buzzing around and creating a dangerous area for the pups. I know bees are very beneficial so I don't want to hurt them. I just don't want them to hurt the pups when they go outside to do thier business.

As far as I know bees don't eat apples. They eat pollen and nectar. In Australia there is a bee coloured wasp called the European wasp that does certainly eat apples and other fruit and is a real danger.
Top photo of the European wasp Vespula germanica

Bottom photo The yellow jacket wasp of north America Dolichovespula.

 

[JaimieSkye]

I want an apple tree in the worst way, but I'm allergic to be stings. I was hoping to find some good advice here. Seeing that yellow jacket picture makes me really not want one now. Those are some scary, angry wasps and they are hard to get rid of once you get them in your yard. Thinking about it, I don't remember there being a lot of wasps or bees around the apple trees when we go apple picking. I wonder if there is some kind of spray or something they use. I'll have to ask next time I get to the orchard.

 

[dhrynio]

We had a huge was problem here this last summer. Our sweet cherry trees produced so much this year that we couldn't keep up. The ones that fell off were attacked by wasps and I finally just had to go and rake them up and put them in the compost.You could not even go to pick them because the wasps were everywhere.

If you are concerned about the pups I would say get in there during a time of day when the wasps are not yet out and get to picking up the fallen apples. It would only take one big clean up then a tidy every day would be short.

Although I guess it also depends on how many apple trees you have, if it is 3-4 you can do a pick up if you have an entire orchard it would require more work!

 

[Jed]

You can make wasp traps using 2 litre juice containers and using sugar water or something similar to catch them. There're many different variations but they are quite effective. Here's one below.

Another thing you can do is, on sunset watch the flight path of the wasps and you may be able to find where they are nesting. Sunset's the best time as you can see them flying very easily. We've destroyed many nests this way.

 

[dhrynio]

Very good suggestions Jed! I hadn't even thought about that. I will think about making a trap next year because keeping up with the raking and pickin u p the dropped ones is a lot.

 

[lovinglife]

For some reason we had wasp nests all around our place this year. I bet we got rid of at least 10 LARGE NESTS!!! YUCKKKKKK!!!!! I hate those things!!!