Maple sugar and bees

[DaveB]

I have an outbuilding that I've converted to a commercial kitchen where I do my packing and recently make granulated maple sugar. I recently got a large order and have been working on multiple batches a day and it seems like my efforts have attracted bees. I didn't mind so much when there were a few but yesterday I noticed a couple of honey bees and his morning it was like a swarm with literally hundreds of bees outside and inside. I know they are attracted to the sugar but because I'm working on such a large order it's nearly impossible to not have any sugar dust or syrup drops that they are attracted to.

My guess is that the honey bees have notified the hive of the source of sugar and have sent out additional forces to help collect it but how can I dissuade them or make them go away?

[western mainer]

Come dark they will go home.You need a tight building to do it. They will be back tomorrow!

[DaveB]

Come dark they will go home.You need a tight building to do it. They will be back tomorrow!

Yes, they did go home and I was able to do some work this evening. Keeping everything closed is hard - it gets too hot in there.

I've set some "traps" outside so hopefully they go there in the AM and not inside.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Traps won't be the solution because they don't offer what they really want and that's sugar first and then wax second. I would bait them with sugar water in a larger scale than what you have in the shack. I would make your feeder more attractive than your shack. liquid sugar is more attractive than dry sugar. I feel your pain I rendered a bunch of wax right inside my garage along with some old frames. I left the garage open while I went out for a few hours. Holly Molly I saw the cloud from a few houses away. I took me better part of the day to get all traces of what they were looking for and to get them to reset their GPS to something better. If you know someone with a unused bee hive with wax and frames you can place them with thick sugar water close but yet far enough away to detract them from you.

I hate to see you kill them in traps because if you see 10 in your shack there are hundreds doing the back and forth so you will need to trap them all to be free of them.

[bmbmkr]

Mix 1lb of sugar to 1pint of water, I'd do at least a gallon. Put it in a container they can't drown in, like a pan with a brick or gravel in it, put it a safe distance from your packing house. Once a bee finds a source, they go back to the colony and do a "waggle" dance, which the other bees can determine distance, strength of the find, and the angle of the dance tells they use as reference to the angle of the sun. Very clever creatures. Good luck!