"Bee-leaver" DIY Honey Bee Repellent

UPDATE:
It’s been a while since I’ve last made any edits or additions to this page, but I will say that thinking ahead and buying a professionally made solution is always the better choice. As stated below, the main reason I went this route was because I did not take into account how popular or in demand the product was and how long it was going to take to be delivered. The recipe below might work in a pinch but as Jim mentions in a comment below it is insane to take chances with your bees. Grab yourself a bottle: Fischer's Bee-Quick® for Removing Honey Bees from Honey Supers - a Safe and Organic-Approved Honey Harvesting Tool (8 oz) before the flow so you have it on hand during the harvest.

Along with 3D printing, tinkering with electronics, and a bunch of other hobbies I am also a beekeeper. I have been beekeeping for about 6 years or so now and I feel like I’m constantly learning new things when it comes to honeybees. I decided to write this short post in hopes that it’ll help others who are trying to use a fume board and extract honey. There is a ton of information out there concerning this but I really don’t feel like there is a singular place that answers the question of: What can I use to get my bees out of the honey supers when I can’t find products like; Bee-Quick, Bee Go, and Honey-B-Gone?

As with all things, here is a disclaimer: I am not responsible for your bees or honey and this guide is provided solely for educational purposes. Please always do your own research and make sure you know what you’re doing and not blindly following the advice of a random stranger on the internet!

Introduction

So the honey extraction season is upon us in the Pacific Northwest, I was lazy and didn’t think about how I was going to extract the frames this year . I delayed until the end of July before I even thought about how I would pull the frames this year. This will be the first year that I use a fume board. The previous years have consisted of brushing bees off the frames, carrying them one by one into the garage and hoping bees didn’t follow me. I wanted to find a safe way of getting the bees away from the honey supers and not have to go through the process of brushing and walking to the garage frame by frame. I picked up a fume board from Amazon which was literally made of a few pieces of wood, a felt pad, and black plastic sheet. I would have just made one but it was easier to just buy. I also planned on picking up a bottle of Fischer’s Bee-Quick which was made of natural ingredients that would help repel the bees and force them out of the honey supers, but apparently it was completely sold out on Amazon and I didn’t want to wait 5-7 days from other sites. I began research on an alternative. One of the top hits on Google was a blog where some folks tried sweet almond oil and it wasn’t successful, they mentioned how dangerous bitter almond oil is and that it was toxic and could burn your skin. I don’t doubt that in the right concentrations it could be dangerous but the fact is most almond extracts are made with either bitter almond oil or benzaldehyde, and a mixture of oil or alcohol. It’s used in cooking, so I feel like it was fairly safe to use.

I also searched through the usual forums: BeeSource, Reddit, Beemaster, and a few other sites. I found a lot of really old threads and some sites that briefly mention the use of imitation almond extract, bitter almond oil and other chemicals, but there were a lot of dead ends and nothing conclusive. I decided to pick up some imitation almond extract which according to McCormick is made from “synthetic benzaldehyde”, which I found to be the main ingredient in a lot of Beehive clearing sprays according to folks on the internet. Along with the imitation almond extract, I picked up a bottle of tea tree oil as well since I read somewhere that is also useful in driving the bees out.

Ingredients: Water Alcohol, and Benzaldehyde

Supplies:
These are the ingredients I bought, you might already have some of these things on hand. Please note that all my Amazon links are affiliated and I gain a small amount of proceeds from them, this helps me keep the site up and continue providing content.

10 Frame Fume Board - Bought this since I didn’t have the time/tools to make my own. I’m sure if you wanted to make it there are free plans out there

Tea Tree oil - This is suppose to help with making sure the repellent doesn’t dissipate instantly.

Imitation Almond Extract - This is made of benzaldehyde which is the main ingredient in most bee repellents that are used on fume boards in the market according to folks online

99% Isopropyl Alcohol - Alcohol will help with the dissipation of the extract and oil

8 oz spray bottle - I didn’t have any lying around so I bought these but honestly any spray bottle will work

Mixture

For an 8oz bottle, I mixed together 4 oz of isopropyl alcohol, 2 oz of imitation almond extract, and 1 oz of tea tree oil. If you want more, you’d just double these ingredients.

8oz bottle, imitation almond extract, tea tree oil, 99% isopropyl alcohol

Does it work?

The short answer is yes, the long answer is that you’ll need to make sure it’s warm out so the fume board gets warmed up in order for the spray to permeates deeper into the hive. The mixture effectively drove the bees out of the honey super fairly quick. I want to say about 10 minutes or so. I sprayed the fume board quite a few times, I think this along with how warm it was at the time which was about 71 really helped sped up the process. I’ll be using this same mixture next year if my bees make it through the winter. I’m happy that I found an alternative to what’s being sold out there and it was fairly easy to make in a pinch. Again, if I would have been able to just picked up a bottle of Bee-Quick or any other bee repellent there would’ve been no need to make this.

Pulled about 160lbs of honey this season

Conclusion

At the end of the day this mixture works just fine but economically it makes more sense to just buy a bottle of Bee-Quick, Honey-b-gone, honey bandit, etc. if you only have a few hives. A bottle on Amazon will cost you somewhere from $15-25. The total cost of this mixture was about $29 if you didn’t already have the ingredients on hand, granted if you did have to buy all of it you’ll have some 99% isopropyl alcohol left over along with a big bottle of almond extract that can be used for baking and etc. ultimately a bottle of store bought spray will last you a long time depending on how many hives you have. A case that can be made for making your own is if you were to buy a 32 oz bottle of 99% isopropyl alcohol for about $19 and a 16 oz bottle of imitation almond extract for about $12, and an 8 oz bottle of tea tree oil at $17, you can make a 56 oz bottle of the mixture at about $1.16 an oz which is way cheaper and if you have a lot of hives this would be more cost effective. The average cost of the premade bottles is about $2.49 per oz. I hope that this will help others who stumble upon my site looking for a way to make a bee repellent to use with their fume board.