Plants that tell bees to buzz off

Honeybee

Description: Medium-size bee with a golden brown to dark brown abdomen, conspicuously banded.

Gregarious and numerous, honeybees follow cycles of blossoms on trees, shrubs, perennials and herbs, as well as patches of lawn clover.

Threat: Without direct physical contact, the honeybee is a passive insect that stings as a last resort. Wild colonies can nest in cavities found in structures or trees, but most are raised in hives. Avoid approaching colonies, which have guard bees.

Unlike other bees and wasps, the honeybee leaves a venom sac with its stinger and dies in the process. If you are stung, you should scrape the sac, which continues to pump venom through the stinger, away from the skin.

A honeybee swarm consists of thousands of bees and looks menacing, but the bees are simply clustered around their queen as they seek new permanent quarters. Still, a swarm should be given a wide berth. Aggressive, Africanized honeybees are found only in Southern border states.

Bumblebee

Description: A large and hairy bee that is mostly black with distinctive lighter bands on the thorax and abdomen, varying by species. Bumblebees can sting but are typically docile as they visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen.

Threat: Bumblebees are inherently gentle, unless you disturb their nests. They live in cavities in the ground, old compost piles and man-made structures. They are protective of their nests.

Carpenter bee

Description: The carpenter bee is a large black bee that resembles a bumblebee, but its abdomen is smooth, not hairy.

Threat: The male bees are stingless but territorial and will bother people as they approach. It’s all bluster. The female bees, however, can sting, but they are not inherently aggressive. Their greater offense is the need to tunnel into decks, trim and other woodwork.

Sweat bees

Description: Sweat bees are represented by many species, but they are all small and agile, essentially harmless to humans. They get their names from their habit of alighting on our skin to sup salty perspiration. Many are gray and drab, but some species are brilliant, though they require close observation to appreciate. Some sweat bees are metallic green.

Threat: Females will sting if pressed or squeezed. You can gently push them away or blow on them without much threat of attack.

Yellow jackets

Description: There are a number of species, and some build aerial nests while others dwell in the ground. They all are roughly similar in size and appearance, with bright-yellow-and-black abdomens.

Threat: This insect embodies the adjective waspish: It was born irritable, though colonies become markedly more aggressive in mid- to late summer, especially in the vicinity of their ground nests. The yellow jacket seeks nectar for itself and meat for its young, and it is the pest most likely to scavenge at barbecues and picnics and around trash bins.

Paper wasps

Description: With their slender waists and long abdomens, paper wasps appear even more menacing than yellow jackets, though they are not as aggressive. They form multi-celled nests from pulp, often building them under eaves or breezeway ceilings.

Threat: Unless nests are close to humans, the wasps pose little risk and are considered beneficial in preying on the larvae of garden pests.

Cicada killers

Description: Ground-dwelling wasps whose numbers can build up to an alarming degree, especially on easily excavated sandy soil. They have black abdomens with yellow spots, and an orange tinge to their wings.

Threat: They appear aggressive but pose little sting risk to humans. They are interested in catching cicadas, which they drag underground to feed to their young.

Hornets

Description: Hornets are big and scary, and with good reason. Two species are relatively common. The introduced European hornet is black and yellow, much like a yellow jacket, and tends to build its paper nests in cavities rather than as free-hanging balls. The other is the native baldfaced hornet, which is technically not a hornet but a giant yellow jacket. It is smaller than the European hornet but more feisty, with a black abdomen but prominent white markings, particularly on its head.

Threat: Both are venomous and dangerous if their nests are disturbed. The lone, foraging European hornet is less aggressive than the baldfaced hornet, which builds the distinctive, football-size gray hanging nests often found in trees.

— The Washington Post

Books, websites, whole organizations are in place to show you how to draw bees and other pollinators to your garden. But what if you don’t want them?

The notion might seem ridiculous to many of us: Gardeners are by nature worried about nature and all its contemporary ills. We can install plants that will throw a lifeline to beleaguered honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies while creating gardens that are natural, floriferous and free of pesticides. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Cnidophobiacs — folks who harbor a fear of insect stings.

A bee or wasp sting will induce one of three basic reactions in people. For most of us, the sting is a painful but localized event, and the pain and swelling will recede in a matter of hours. Some people get a moderate reaction that causes a limb to swell or hives to appear away from the sting site, and the symptoms last for days. A third group faces a life-threatening, systemic reaction called anaphylaxis. A person might develop a severe reaction even if previous stings evoked a milder one.

Still, it is fair to say that the fear of getting stung is greater than the risk. Less than 1 percent of people who are stung go into anaphylactic shock. An estimated 40 people die each year in the United States from insect stings, about the same number as from lightning strikes. More than 30,000 are killed in automobile accidents yearly. We blithely grab our car keys but grow anxious about getting stung in the garden. People who are allergic to a yellow jacket sting might not be to honeybee stings, but that distinction is often lost.

“I have seen people with a strong or even local reaction become hysterical and consider that a systemic reaction,” said John Oppenheimer, an allergist and clinical professor of medicine at Rutgers University. “No one likes being stung, and stings are very frightening,” he said.

I’m a bee lover, and I do everything I can to identify, understand and help the dozens of species of bees and wasps that are drawn to my garden. I dislike yellow jackets but know other wasps as a class gardeners call “beneficials” — tiny helpers that take care of a host of plant pests, from aphids to destructive larvae.

If we were being utterly rational, we would avoid gardening not because of bees but because of other arthropods — namely mosquitoes, ticks, biting flies and some midges, which seek us out to suck our blood.

Recently, a reader with a bee-phobic relative emailed to ask whether it is possible to design a garden that would draw fewer pollinators. This idea runs counter to prevailing ecological sensibilities, as a garden designer named Louis Raymond discovered when he was asked to put together a bee-less landscape for a client worried about her grandchildren getting stung while playing outside.

He found that there were few, if any, reliable lists of plants that would dissuade bees.

“What I realized pretty soon was that there was nothing you could do to repel any of these animals. What you can do is plant things that aren’t of interest,” he said.

Because bees and wasps need nectar, and some species harvest pollen as well, Raymond first turned to plants that don’t rely on such pollinators to reproduce. These include grasses and sedges; wind-pollinated shade trees such as oaks and maples; ferns; bamboos; and a host of conifers, small and large.

Of nectar plants, he uses those whose flower form evolved for pollination by creatures other than bees — his list includes flowering tobacco, trumpet vine, yuccas, bananas, palms and hardy, ground-hugging woodland gingers that are designed for slug pollination.

He uses hostas, grown primarily for their foliage, and makes a point of cutting off their emerging flower stalks. You could apply the same principle to other foliage plants — heucheras, brunneras, coleus, cannas and liriope, for example.

The practice of turning certain trees and shrubs into perennials — by chopping them to the ground each spring — is another technique for not drawing bees. Candidates include catalpas, cotinus and robinias, which if grown this way attain the size of medium to large shrubs but don’t flower. This is getting into the realm of high horticulture, but another approach Raymond uses is to plant things that bloom when it is too cold to go outside — witch hazels, edgeworthias, epimediums and hellebores.

The effect is a garden that might have less color but is engagingly different. “It has fewer flowers; there are no roses, no dahlias, but there’s lots of texture, lots of different foliage size, more species that are less often seen,” said Raymond, whose company, Renaissance Gardening, is based in Hopkinton, R.I. “They should be in every garden regardless of the concerns for bees.”

He concedes that a lawn will draw bees, not for the grass but the inevitable weeds, including dandelions and clover.

Many vegetables produce bee-luring flowers — peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers, for example — but leafy greens, sweet corn and root vegetables don’t need pollinators. Just don’t let them bolt to flower, and cut off potatoes’ blossoms.

A nectarless landscape will have fewer bees, but it won’t necessarily solve the problem. Many wasp species will find the aphid and scale insects in trees and shrubs. In addition — this is my warning, not Raymond’s — honeybees are thirsty creatures and are drawn to water. This includes fish ponds, ornamental pools, birdbaths and clotheslines, if people still put damp clothing out to dry.