Bees at the pool

[IrishLake]

Unless they are honey bees (small and fuzzy), carpenter bees (mostly black and fuzzy like a bumble bee), or bumble bees (bigger and fuzzy)... feel free to kill away. If they are the small "sweat" bees, they really aren't bees, they're a species of fly that mimics bees (at least, that is what we call them in this region). And killing a wasp is nothing, so long as they're good and dead. One of my kids got stung by a paper wasp in the backyard today. Wasp was still alive and flying around after it stung, so it was just asking for me to kill it, which I did happily. Wasps can sting repeatedly and not die, while bees will die when they sting. Oh yes, and yellow jackets, while they resemble bees, are wasps, and are the evilest little things. Rule of thumb: if it's fuzzy/hairy, it's a bee. If it's not, it's a wasp.

My grandma swears by this for keeping bee away. 1/4 cup of liquid dish detergent in a pint of water (or maybe it's a quart). Spray the nuisance bees. They'll die. She also does this for getting rid of gnats in her kitchen, only she puts the mixture in a plate, and the gnats flock to it, get stuck and die.