[Kofu]

Someone posted to a local forum:

"Hey Ive got bees or something attracted to my porch They come up and check it out and they dont leave quick or leave and come back Why are they drawn to the house and not the flowers?"​

Assuming they are honeybees, and these are scout bees from a swarm that's looking for a new home, it may be too late now to do something to stop this particular crowd from moving in to a nook they've discovered. But it makes me curious...

What smell would make the bees not want to set up house there?

A quick web-search brought me to another thread on Beesource, a few years ago, "What Smells Do Bees Stay Away From?," but that's a question about what scent could beekeepers put on themselves to keep the bees away from them when they're in the vicinity of their hives ...

Michael Bush helpfully mentions "Bee Quick (smells like benzaldehyde) Bee go (smells like vomit which is butyric acid), smoke..." but I'm thinking these aren't the sort of thing an average person would be able to muster. Well, vomit, maybe that's worth a try...

One page I found suggests fabric softener sheets, for bees and mosquitoes. Haven't tried that. Does anyone know if it would actually work?

Other ideas? Or maybe someone here really knows?

 

[Kofu]

I really know that bee quick smells like almonds.

Almond extract, then? Or artificial almond extract?

GaSteve, in the same thread mentioned before, says his son did a science fair experiment and found that artificial banana flavoring provoked the bees to attack a lot more than a smear of actual banana.

 

[Kofu]

Beego would make them stay out. Name says it all. Same as bee quick.

I wonder what supermarket-type products have the smell of Bee go. Looking up Butyric acid, maybe some kinds of cheese would have enough in it to have effect.

"Butyric acid is found in milk, especially goat, sheep and buffalo milk, butter, Parmesan cheese, and as a product of anaerobic fermentation (including in the colon and as body odor). It has an unpleasant smell and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether). It can be detected by mammals with good scent detection abilities (such as dogs) at 10 ppb, whereas humans can detect it in concentrations above 10 ppm."​

Aldi Supermarket has a cheap kind of goat cheese (which I happen to have in my fridge, so if I had to repel a swarm that was moving into somewhere right now, that might be worth trying. And it has the consistency of putty.. )

I've instructed people to go and buy a bottle of artificial almond extract and use full strength to repel scouts or colonizing swarms. It appears to work at least favorably, and is more readily accessible than Bee Quick or HoneyBGone.

Why do you say it works "at least favorably"? Are there times when it didn't work, or were there other complications that make it hard to say that it made a difference?