A Plant That Attracts Thirsty Bees

December 29, 2025

Contents

How Can We Not Love Swimming Pools?………………………………………………………………………………1
Providing Bees with Alternative Water Sources ………………………………………………………………………2
Fabricating Artificial Water Sources………………………………………………………………………………………4
So What Have I Learned?…………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
Water Collectors are Different than Nectar Foragers ……………………………………………………………12
What Have I Found to Work Best? ……………………………………………………………………………………..14
It Doesn’t Appear to be the Flowers or the Scent …………………………………………………………………16
Wrap Up ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….18
Disclaimer………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..18
Citations and Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..19

A Plant That Attracts Thirsty Bees  

First Published in ABJ August 2025 

Randy Oliver

ScientificBeekeeping.com 

 

What is it with us beekeepers? On one hand we love invasive non-native weeds (so long as they produce nectar), but we dread having a neighbor with a swimming pool. 

How Can We Not Love Swimming Pools? 

In California during the summer, water sources for our bees are often scarce (we’re lucky to get even a “trace” of rainfall during the summer months), and hives send out hordes of water foragers (especially since summers are getting hotter every year). This is a huge problem for urban, suburban, and even rural beekeepers, since those water foragers may bother our neighbors when they flock to swimming pools, hot tubs, bird baths, backyard ponds, livestock water troughs, and dripping garden faucets. 

Fig. 1 What’s to dread about this happy scene? The problem is that thirsty honey bees don’t mix well with kids in swimming pools. Here in California, once the nectar flow dries up, thirsty bees will fly over a natural pond to lap up the chlorinated water of a swimming pool, especially where it’s been splashed where the kids walk in bare feet. Next thing we know, we’re getting the dreaded phone call. 

Practical application: Once our nectar flow ends in mid-July, our bees get thirsty! If we can’t lure our water foragers away from neighboring swimming areas, we are forced to move our hives out of those locations for the rest of the summer, resulting in having to overstock our other outyards. 

Providing Bees with Alternative  Water Sources 

Many California streams and ponds dry up during the summer, and even in remote areas beekeepers may need to provide their colonies artificial water sources (Figure 2). 

Fig. 2 Commercial beekeepers in the West may have to haul water to their outyards. I snapped this photo of some of David Bradshaw’s clever drip waterers. But even with sources like these, you may not be able to keep your bees out of livestock water troughs. 

As far as suburban or urban beekeeping, to avoid “nuisance” issues, most California counties (if they allow beekeeping at all) have ordinances that require placement of a water source adjacent to an apiary if a natural source of water (like a stream, pond, or canal) doesn’t exist nearby. For many of us, dealing with complaints about bees at neighbors’ water sources is a major problem — sometimes solvable, but unfortunately often requiring us to move the hives to another location. 

And it’s not just swimming pools, it’s also dealing with bee-fearful gardeners (Figure 3). 

Fig. 3 Many gardeners are fearful of bees at a dripping faucet. The best solution that I’ve found is to calmly show the neighbor how you can simply brush the bees away without initiating any stinging (and then fix the drip for them). 

The public doesn’t understand that honey bees defend their hive — not flowers or water sources. You often only need to explain this fact to an anxious neighbor. 

A practical tip: When a neighbor expresses fear that they might get stung by bees gathering water, I pull out a $100 bill, and offer them a challenge to win it: If they can get a bee to sting them within five minutes (without intentionally pressing one against their skin), they win. No one’s won yet! 

Fabricating Artificial Water Sources 

In trying to solve this problem, we’ve spent decades trying to lure bees away from neighbors’ water sources near our many outyards. I’ve tested every kind of method or additive to make our water sources attractive, including adding various types and concentrations of salt and trace minerals (none made much difference), chlorine, attractive scents, colors and reflective surfaces, and all kinds of floats or resting places (e.g., burlap, cotton, bark, gravel, or sand), as well as applying repellents at the neighbor’s water (Bee-Go, DEET, benzaldehyde, bug sprays). 

Results: It’s not difficult to create a water source that some water collectors will go to, but it’s really hard to lure them away from a neighbor’s property. That said, I’ll share some observations (Figures 4-10). 

Fig. 4 Bees don’t want to drown, so they like a dry, rough interface that they can stand on while they drink. The concrete wall of this neighbor’s birdbath fit the bill.

Fig. 5 A slow drip onto a cinder block works well. 

 Fig. 6 Ditto for a pan of gravel, with the gravel projecting clear of the water to that the bees can keep their feet dry. 

 

Fig. 7 I tried wet sand at the edge of my fish pond — the bees created squiggles! 

Fig. 8 Floating bark (or wine corks) adds an organic scent, as well as wet crevices. 

 

Fig. 9 In desperation, I’ve experimented with floating trays of sand, soil, manure, along with solar-powered drips or sprays. Aquatic plants with pond mud on their roots helped, but still couldn’t lure the bees away from a nearby swimming pool. 

Fig. 10 Aquatic plants may help, but although bees like the flowers of water lilies (and sometimes spend the night in them), and stand on edges of the leaves to slurp, I wouldn’t call them an “attractant” to a water source. 

 So What Have I Learned? 

I can install what “should be” a highly-attractive water source in an apiary, only to frustratingly find that my hives’ water collectors continue to instead go across the street (Figure 11). 

Fig. 11 At our urban outyards, we often excavate simple shallow ponds lined with 5-mil plastic, and add cinder blocks and aquatic plants. But although the bees used this one, many still flew to a concrete fishpond at an unappreciative neighbor’s place across the street. 

Water Collectors are Different than Nectar Foragers 

Keep in mind that there are separate nectar foragers and “water collectors.” Most of the honey bee forager force is motivated to collect sugar (generally in the form of nectar), of which the colony often has a surplus on hand (stored as honey). So during a nectar flow, the colony is often trying to “get rid of” excess water (by evaporative fanning). However, there are times when the colony instead has a dire need for water (for jelly production by the nurses, or for cooling the hive). In this case, a different group of foragers (based upon demand) seeks and collects sugar-free water, motivated by the desperate thirst of the colony [i]. 

As explained by Seeley [ii]: 

Lindauer found that when a colony urgently needs water, its receiver bees do exert preferences among foragers; they speedily unload those with water or dilute nectar but tend to ignore foragers with concentrated nectar. This stimulates the water collectors to continue working and to recruit others to their task [boldface mine]. 

Perhaps we need to pay attention to this recruitment, and the differences between recruitment of nectar foragers and that of water collectors. Nectar foragers recruit to general patches of scented flowers (since they’d already emptied the flower that they just left), whereas water collectors seek a specific location where there is an inexhaustible source of (perhaps unscented) water. So the question is, has the honey bee evolved different recruitment methods? 

Practical question: We know that when a honey bee finds a nectar source, in addition to bringing back the scent of the flower itself, it leaves behind a “scent mark” to attract recruits [iii]. Since water collectors are not recruited to a general patch of scented flowers, but rather to a specific water source location, how important are such scent marks to attract water collectors to that source? 

Although (similar to other herbivores) bees may prefer the taste of water with a bit of salt or other trace minerals, what water foragers are most interested in is water. Allow me to share two observations that I’ve made about water collectors going to large sources of water having a single scent: 

Observation 1: Many years ago I moved to a place with a large concrete pond. On the first day after I brought bees in, the water foragers all showed up at the same spot of the uniform concrete bank that surrounded the pond. And that remained the only spot on the bank that they went to for the rest of the year! There was nothing that I could see that was unique to that spot, other than that’s where the first water forager discovered a good place to load up. 

Observation 2: We have another outyard of bees above a lake. My wife and I enjoyed kayaking around the lake. On each trip I closely inspected the entire shore for honey bees gathering water. Year after year, there was only a single spot that I ever saw bees at (Figure 12). 

Fig. 12 Although the lake had over seven miles of shoreline, this little stump (near the apiary) was the only spot where I ever saw water foragers. 

Conclusion: It appears to me that the water collectors are marking the specific site with a scent, which then attracts additional recruited water collectors. I wonder whether the marker scent placed by a successful water collector is more important than all the other variables? 

What Have I Found to Work Best? 

I’ve experimented in my home yard with setting up different mortar tubs as “ponds,” each containing different potential “attractants” (gravel, bark, salt, different aquatic plants) and then moving them around the yard. There is always one clear winner (Figures 13 & 14). 

Fig. 13 The consistent winner is the presence of water hyacinth! Since water hyacinths can’t survive the winter in my area without frost protection, there is little chance that my water collectors had been exposed to this plant elsewhere, so it may function as a unique attractant to this specific water source. 

Water hyacinth, Pontederia crassipes (formerly Eichhornia crassipes) is an aquatic plant native to South America, naturalized throughout the world, and often invasive outside its native range. I don’t suggest introducing it where it is not yet established, but it doesn’t hurt to put some in a tub where it can’t escape. 

Fig. 14 Of all the bee waterers I’ve tested, the most attractive place is always the water hyacinths (more than any other water plant). Here’s a repurposed bathtub in my garden (with a log to allow lizards to climb out). It roars from dawn to dusk with bees every summer day, while only a few water foragers show up at several other waterers and ponds in the same yard. You can watch a short video of active water collector bees in this tub here [iv].  

It Doesn’t Appear to be the Flowers or the Scent 

So what is it about water hyacinth that make it so attractive to water collectors? Although they can bloom (Figure 5), what the water collectors are interested in is apparently their easy and safe access to water while walking on the floating leaves (Figure 16). 

Fig. 15 Yes, water hyacinth does flower, but that’s not what water collector bees are interested in. 

 

Fig. 16 I can’t detect any odor or taste on the leaves that might attract water collectors, nor do the bees lick them much. Instead, they land on the leaves and then probe around with their proboscises until they find water-filled crevices to drink from. 

Wrap-Up 

For those of you who are having trouble with your neighbors due to your bees gathering water, I regret to say that I’ve yet to find a foolproof way to lure the bees to another water source. But water hyacinths are worth a try! Be sure to set up a bee pond proactively (before the bees get trained to your neighbors’ water sources). 

Disclaimer 

The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests or relationships with the water hyacinth, and is not a paid promotor or influencer. 

 CITATIONS AND NOTES

1 Kühnholz, S., & Seeley, T. D. (1997) The control of water collection in honey bee colonies. Behavioral
Ecology and Sociobiology 41: 407-422.
2 Seeley, T (1986) Social foraging by honeybees: how colonies allocate foragers among patches of
flowers. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 19: 343-354.
3 Reinhard, J & M Srinivasan (2009) The role of scents in honey bee foraging and recruitment. Food
exploitation by social insects: ecological, behavioral, and theoretical approaches 1: 165-182.
4 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/er2dmlvfei1ln7silg30n/Bees-on-hyacinthfinal.mp4?rlkey=3dua4x8ibqq27cknwf94sz1bg&dl=0​