bees and camping

[Catrin]

Loving my camping trip even though my bent boob has so far prevented my riding. That just provides.me the chance to hike the mtb trails with a set of hand pruners We have.this viney sticker things that like to protrude over the trail and draw blood.

For you more advanced campers, what can I do about bees at the campsite? Lots of bees. Yellow small bees. Lots of them, and they make mealtime painful. I had to eat in my car last night They divebomb my food and I've never seen them here like that.

I've a large Citronella candle, that now has several little bees in it. Smoke from the fire didn't help. What else.can I do? Couldn't.find anything on Google and I figured someone here would have a better idea. At lunch yesterday I set out a little bowl of water and that helped. It is very, very dry here.

[westtexas]

Do you have any Mountain Dew on hand? When we used to camp when I was little, we'd leave open cans of that around the perimeter of the camp site. Draws those things in like crazy (usually).

[limewave]

We had tons of bees on our site too. They are drawn to water. We left a bucket on the far side of our campsite and they all swarmed over there. Hope that helps!

[Eden]

You said small - if they are smaller than bees and fly in squares..... they might not be bees, but rather hover flies, which are annoying but don't sting. They do look a lot like bees - but they fly really differently. (edit - I've just read they can be the same size as bees... depends on the species - I guess ours out here are smaller than bees)

[GLC1968]

Or, yellow jackets? Those things look like bees, sting worse than bees and are very, very drawn to food and sugar.

I like the idea of mountain dew to draw them away from you. Anything full of sugar and somewhat wet/liquidy, should work. We have traps around our property that keep them somewhat under control and the inserts are like these wet things that have a fairly strong sweet odor.

[TsPoet]

I was going to ask if they were bees or something else, too.
Bees are amazing little creatures, they "smell" fear - that's not just an old wives tale. So, if you are calm and ignore them, they ignore you... I am never bothered by bees while people around me are.
Wasps, on the other hand... they actually can also be "controlled" just by not caring about them, but not as successfully (for me) and when they sting it really hurts.
When I camp, I figure I am the interloper and whatever is bothering me has a right to be there and I leave it/them alone whenever possible. Of course some things have been attracted by humans and their garbage...