How to Keep Bees and Wasps Away From a Pool

Why are bees and wasps attracted to my pool?

They are there for water, and a pool is the largest, safest, most dependable water source in the yard. Honeybees haul water back to the hive to cool it by evaporation in hot weather and to dilute thick honey for the larvae, and a single colony sends out foragers that can visit the same spot hundreds of times a day. Wasps need water too, and they add a second reason: they hunt other insects around the water and scavenge sweet drinks and food off nearby tables. The shallow steps, wet coping, and splash-out around a pool give them dozens of safe places to land and drink without falling in.

Bees often prefer water with a little salt or mineral content over a clean birdbath, which is one reason a chlorinated or saltwater pool can beat every other water source nearby. Scout bees that find a good spot recruit nestmates back at the hive, and foragers stay faithful to a productive source once they learn it. That is why a bee problem gets worse over several days rather than better, and why it is stubborn once it is established: you are not dealing with a few random visitors, you are dealing with a colony that has marked your pool as its watering hole.

Wasps and yellowjackets peak in late summer and early fall, when colonies are largest and their food is running short, so they turn bolder and more aggressive right at the end of swim season. A pool with any standing water around the pad, a dripping backwash line, or damp low spots is even more attractive, because it offers water in more places than just the pool itself. Keeping the deck and equipment area dry removes the easy targets and pushes them to look elsewhere.

How do I get rid of bees in my pool right now?

Skim out the individual bees with a net and, if you see a cluster or ball of bees, leave it alone or call a local beekeeper rather than trying to kill it. A few bees drinking at the edge are just foragers; net out any that fall in with a skimmer net or leaf rake so they do not drown and foul the water. Bees that get wet can sometimes recover if you lift them onto a warm, dry surface out of the water and out of reach.

A dense cluster the size of a football hanging from a branch, fence, or piece of pool furniture is a swarm, a colony on the move looking for a new home. It is usually calm because the bees have no nest or honey to defend, and it typically moves on by itself within a few hours to a couple of days. Do not spray it, hose it, or knock it into the water. Most areas have beekeepers who will collect a healthy swarm for free, which is far better than killing pollinators and much safer than provoking thousands of bees near a pool.

Never pour insecticide, bug spray, or extra pool chemicals into or right beside the water to deal with bees. Pesticide in a pool is a hazard to the people who swim in it and does nothing to stop the next wave of foragers, and spraying the deck where children and pets go is worse than the bees. The lasting fix is not killing the bees you can see, it is taking away the reason the colony keeps sending them, which the next section covers.

How do you keep bees away from a pool for good?

Give the bees an easier, closer water source away from the pool, then make the pool itself harder to use. Set up a shallow dish or a bucket with a floating board, corks, or a pile of stones for the bees to land on, and place it in a quiet corner of the yard as far from the pool and the patio as you can. A little salt in that water makes it more attractive than the pool, since bees seek out minerals. Put it out early in the day before the foragers commit to the pool, and once they are using it you can move it a few feet farther from the house every couple of days.

Cover the water when the pool is not in use. A [solar cover](/reviews/best-solar-pool-cover) or safety [cover](/reviews/best-pool-cover) blocks the surface the bees are drinking from, and a bee cannot get a foothold on a covered pool. Covering it during the busiest foraging hours, mid-morning through late afternoon on hot days, breaks the habit fast because the foragers arrive, find no water, and eventually give up on the location. Fix any dripping backwash line, hose leak, or puddle around the equipment pad at the same time, since those give them backup water even when the pool is covered.

Then stop advertising the pool. Bees and wasps are drawn to floral scents and bright colors, so skip heavily perfumed sunscreen, lotion, and hair products at the pool, and choose less flashy floats, towels, and umbrellas where you can. Keep sweet drinks, fruit, and open trash covered, because those pull wasps in even faster than water does. Keep the water clean and balanced so the pool never grows the algae and insects that give wasps something to hunt; the pool maintenance schedule and ideal chemistry levels cover the routine that keeps it uninviting.

How do you get rid of wasps around a pool?

Find and remove the nest, because unlike traveling bees, wasps around a pool usually mean a nest is close by. Check the eaves and soffits, under the coping and diving board, inside the pool equipment, in the hollow rails of a fence, and inside patio furniture and umbrellas that sit folded up. Look in the early morning or at dusk when the wasps are least active and most of the colony is home. A small paper-wasp nest can be knocked down after dark with a labeled wasp spray applied from a distance, but treat a large yellowjacket or hornet nest, or any nest you cannot reach safely, as a job for a professional.

Hang wasp traps, but place them away from where people swim and sit, out toward the edge of the yard, so they pull wasps in the opposite direction from the pool rather than luring more into it. Baited traps work on the scavenging yellowjackets that show up in late summer looking for sugar and protein. Empty and rebait them as they fill, and set them out early in the season before the colony gets large, since a handful of trapped queens in spring prevents a much bigger problem in fall.

Do not swat at wasps near the water. A crushed wasp releases an alarm scent that calls in more, and flailing near swimmers is how stings happen. Move calmly, keep food and sweet drinks covered, and rinse spills off the deck. Late-season wasps are more aggressive because their colony is peaking and their natural food is disappearing, so the end of swim season is exactly when nest removal and traps matter most.

What smells and deterrents keep bees and wasps away?

Bees and wasps dislike strong minty and herbal scents such as peppermint, spearmint, citronella, lemongrass, eucalyptus, and clove. A few drops of one of these essential oils in water, misted on the deck, coping, and nearby furniture, can make the area less inviting, and citronella candles or a peppermint plant near the seating area help at the margins. Cucumber slices or peels left on the deck and dryer sheets tucked into cushions get recommended a lot; they are mild and worth trying, but do not expect them to hold off a committed colony on their own.

Take away the things that attract them at the same time. Floral perfumes, scented sunscreen, sugary drinks, and bright colors all pull bees and wasps in, so cutting those out does as much as any repellent. Keep the essential-oil sprays and the cucumber on the deck and surrounding surfaces, never in the pool water, since oils and additives throw off the chemistry and clog the filter.

Be honest about what these deterrents can and cannot do. A scent spray is a supporting move, not the fix, the same way it goes with water bugs and frogs. What actually clears bees and wasps is the combination of a better water source drawing them off, a cover taking the pool surface away, a wasp nest removed, and no floral scents or sweet food inviting them in. Get those right and you will barely need a repellent; skip them and no spray will keep the pool to yourself.

Does chlorine kill bees and wasps?

No, normal pool chlorine does not kill or repel bees and wasps, and raising it will not clear them. At a standard free chlorine level of 1 to 3 ppm, the water is not strong enough to bother an insect landing on the surface for a few seconds to drink, and bees in particular seem to prefer treated pool water anyway. The bees and wasps that die in a pool drown from exhaustion after falling in, the same way frogs do, not from the chemistry.

Do not shock the pool as a pest-control tactic. A heavy dose of chlorine does nothing to the foragers, it wastes chemicals, and it forces everyone out of the water while you wait for the level to come back down. If the water genuinely needs shocking for algae or after a storm, do it for that reason, and let the water source swap and the cover be what moves the insects along.

Give the ones that do fall in a way out. A partly submerged pool noodle, a rope draped over the edge, or a floating pad at the waterline lets a wet bee climb out and dry off instead of drowning, which also keeps dead insects out of your skimmer basket. Clearing the skimmer daily during a bad stretch keeps a load of drowned bees from clouding the water and clogging the flow on top of the pest problem itself.

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