Jul 28, 2011 – What’s The Buzz?
QUESTION:
I have a customer who owns a recyling center. He has bees swarming on top of the aluminum cans which are in a 40ft. container with an open top. I do not want to spray any chemicals on the cans because they are being recycled. Do you have any ideas?
ANSWER:
This is always a very difficult problem, where bees or wasps are attracted to a food resource. I will go out on a limb here and assume that this customer of yours is not inclined to make any particular changes himself in the way things are being done there. He has bees that he does not want around and expects you to just make them go away. I will say that there really aren't any repellents that could be used, so that is out. If the sweet odors from the cans continues to exist it is going to continue to attract bees, so that cannot be changed. So, what we are down to is that the bees are going to come to this facility and your choices are either to kill them all or to prevent them from getting to the cans.
Killing the bees (or could it be yellowjackets) is going to be difficult. If it is yellowjackets then perhaps you have a chance by offering bait stations around the facility, using one of the two residual insecticides currently labeled for use in yellowjacket baiting (Onslaught and CyKick). Only yellowjackets will be drawn to this kind of bait, not honeybees, and it would be very limited due to competition from the recycled cans and their attractive odors. Even if you were allowed to use some insecticides that would effectively kill bees this would become a course of frustration. Whatever you sprayed would either be removed shortly afterward or the insecticide active ingredient would degrade rapidly, requiring you to make constant applications of the material, which somehow does not seem like a good idea.
I don't have any wonderful brainstorms on this, but if there is some way to exclude the bees this is a goal you should work toward, and it is going to have to involve the customer to change the practices currently in effect. I am picturing bins that are 40 feet long, rather than 40 feet high, and hopefully this is correct. The open top is obviously for the convenience of the workers who regularly dump another load of cans into the bin. I say this naively, but is there any way to put a lid on that bin that could be opened each time a load needs to go into it? Could it be covered with a plastic tarp that is removed and then replaced? I have dropped by recycling centers many times myself and I know very well the rush hour work they do and the fact that sanitation is not exactly part of their mission statement. The bins are generally filthy and never washed, so there is always going to be that odor of spilled sugary materials that will attract the bees.
Is there any way to enclose these bins within a space that would keep the bees physically away, and yet allow the workers with their forklifts or loaders to push through and empty the cans into the bins? This would take some time and expense to create, but I really do not see pesticides as any kind of an answer here, and certainly not a long range answer to the problem. Changes the practices to exclude the bees would be the better approach to work toward. Unfortunately a look at a number of resources on the internet offers only that sanitation and rinsing of cans are the keys to preventing bees from being a problem at recycling centers, and these just do not seem to be useful options for a commercial recycling center.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
I have a customer who owns a recyling center. He has bees swarming on top of the aluminum cans which are in a 40ft. container with an open top. I do not want to spray any chemicals on the cans because they are being recycled. Do you have any ideas?
ANSWER:
This is always a very difficult problem, where bees or wasps are attracted to a food resource. I will go out on a limb here and assume that this customer of yours is not inclined to make any particular changes himself in the way things are being done there. He has bees that he does not want around and expects you to just make them go away. I will say that there really aren't any repellents that could be used, so that is out. If the sweet odors from the cans continues to exist it is going to continue to attract bees, so that cannot be changed. So, what we are down to is that the bees are going to come to this facility and your choices are either to kill them all or to prevent them from getting to the cans.
Killing the bees (or could it be yellowjackets) is going to be difficult. If it is yellowjackets then perhaps you have a chance by offering bait stations around the facility, using one of the two residual insecticides currently labeled for use in yellowjacket baiting (Onslaught and CyKick). Only yellowjackets will be drawn to this kind of bait, not honeybees, and it would be very limited due to competition from the recycled cans and their attractive odors. Even if you were allowed to use some insecticides that would effectively kill bees this would become a course of frustration. Whatever you sprayed would either be removed shortly afterward or the insecticide active ingredient would degrade rapidly, requiring you to make constant applications of the material, which somehow does not seem like a good idea.
I don't have any wonderful brainstorms on this, but if there is some way to exclude the bees this is a goal you should work toward, and it is going to have to involve the customer to change the practices currently in effect. I am picturing bins that are 40 feet long, rather than 40 feet high, and hopefully this is correct. The open top is obviously for the convenience of the workers who regularly dump another load of cans into the bin. I say this naively, but is there any way to put a lid on that bin that could be opened each time a load needs to go into it? Could it be covered with a plastic tarp that is removed and then replaced? I have dropped by recycling centers many times myself and I know very well the rush hour work they do and the fact that sanitation is not exactly part of their mission statement. The bins are generally filthy and never washed, so there is always going to be that odor of spilled sugary materials that will attract the bees.
Is there any way to enclose these bins within a space that would keep the bees physically away, and yet allow the workers with their forklifts or loaders to push through and empty the cans into the bins? This would take some time and expense to create, but I really do not see pesticides as any kind of an answer here, and certainly not a long range answer to the problem. Changes the practices to exclude the bees would be the better approach to work toward. Unfortunately a look at a number of resources on the internet offers only that sanitation and rinsing of cans are the keys to preventing bees from being a problem at recycling centers, and these just do not seem to be useful options for a commercial recycling center.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
