I regularly receive questions from gardeners who are afraid of bees and want to know which plants will not attract bees to their gardens.
Don’t Blame the Bee
In answering, I first feel I have to put my teaching hat on and explain that bees are not aggressive and will not attack you if you do not disturb them. Wasps and hornets, however, are aggressive and will attack without much provocation, but not bees. But then, wasps and hornets are not particularly drawn to flowers.
Remember that unlike wasps that can sting several times in their lives and therefore don’t have to be reticent about stinging, if a bee stings you, it dies. It therefore has no reason to sting if it is not in mortal danger, or if you’re not threatening its nest. You can even, and I do it when I visit a garden with children, rub the back of a bee with your finger while it is pollinating a flower and it will not even react. Personally, in more than 40 years of gardening, I’ve worked side by side with bees almost daily during the summer months and yet have been stung only twice… both times when I was barefoot and stepped on the bee. In those cases, I don’t blame the bee, I blame myself.

Apiphobia
Obviously, this logical explanation is of no use if you suffer from apiphobia (the fear of bees or bee stings). If so, you don’t want bees in your environment, period. If this is the case, avoid growing any plant with showy or fragrant flowers. In other words, eliminate 95% of all ornamental plants from your plant list. Bees won’t visit grasses, even those with fairly attractive flowers, nor will they frequent other wind-pollinated plants. This group (wind-pollinated plants) includes many weeds, such as ragweed, plantain, goosefoot and pigweed, but also most large deciduous trees, such as oak, walnut, birch, maple, etc. and the vast majority of conifers.

Seasonal Allergies
Note that if you suffer from both apiphobia and also seasonal allergic rhinitis (hay fever), you have a serious problem, because your allergy is caused by wind-pollinated plants. So, logically, when you exclude the flowering plants from your environment and replace them by wind-pollinated ones, you increase the amount of pollen in the air and suffer more from hay fever.
A person who is both allergic and apiphobic could however grow ferns, mosses and other so-called primitive plants, as they produce no flowers at all and thus neither attract bees or nor produce pollen. Also, as long as your lawn is mowed frequently enough to prevent the plants that comprise it from flowering, it will also be safe for allergic apiphobics.
Personally, though, if I was suffering seriously from apiphobia, I would rather have my fear treated than exclude all flowering plants from my environment! A world without flowers: how sad!
This text was first published on this blog on October 26, 2014. It has been revised and the layout updated.
I’m a long time gardener who has been stung just a few times over a lot of years…all of which were my own fault. Mostly just putting my hand or foot in the wrong place. Currently I live where there are quite active wasps which live in an attic area and visit my balcony garden a lot, depending on what is flowering. They don’t sting and will even dodge out of my way as I fuss over my plants. I had what I believe were the same type of wasps in a previous garden. Ignored me completely but were honing in on a group of pollen covered plants for a few weeks. Did some reading and looking at the difference between some bees and these somewhat similar looking wasps. These appear to truly be wasps. No stings in the five years of gardening on this balcony. Guess it could happen if I should accidentally touch one but so far we have been able to avoid each other. From what I read some wasps are actually unable to sting while there are some other wasp species just unlikely to sting as is the case with bees. Because I get a fairly strong reaction when I am stung I have learned to keep an anti-histamine handy just in case. That makes a big difference.
Sadly, we can not allow them to establish hives within our public landscapes because of this. Although rare, there are a few among our guests who dislike bees. (Also, we needed to remove hives that were established within the walls of buildings. That was a real bummer.)
I wonder why there is no time against the date of the published comment. There is a time on the french side. Thanks.
I find that many people are unable to distinguish a bee from a wasp, hence the fear.