Travelling in convoy will not deter bees

We tackle some of the huge issues in life here at The Creative Shed, and here’s such an example.

We have a bee hive in our yard – a friend keeps bees as a hobby and we decided to help out by having a hive, with the promise of some fresh honey each spring. Of course, once the honey is taken from the hive, you have a very unhappy bunch of bees. In our case, three days later and they’re still patrolling their perimeter and seeking any human that comes within about 15 metres of the hive. Which is a pain if you want to do things like mow the jungle formerly known as your lawn.

So after two aborted attempts at mowing, I decided to try Aerogard (N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide) to see if the couple of bees hounding me would back off. I’m pleased to report they did but I wouldn’t want to rely on it as a deterrent for more than a couple of bees and if you have a bee allergy I wouldn’t even risk that. And of course there are many other brands out there beside Aerogard, it was just the one I had at hand.

And did you know: Aerogard was developed by Doug Waterhouse at Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, who passed on the formula to Mortein. For nothing.

[Pic via Motifake]