Tick sprays can harm honeybees, which is why professional application matters. The ingredients in tick control are toxic to bees on direct contact, but responsible treatment will avoid targeting bees or the places where they like to gather.
If you are worried about harming the honeybees in your yard, you can still benefit from tick treatment. The tick treatment can harm honeybees, but if applied correctly, this harm can be reduced greatly.
Most conventional tick and mosquito treatments use pyrethroids. These are toxic to bees. If applied directly to a bee when it is foraging or if applied to a bloom on a flower visited by a bee shortly afterward, it can harm it. Any company saying otherwise is overpromising.
However, the reason why tick control still makes sense if you are concerned about honeybees comes down to this: where the material goes and when. Tick treatment goes on tick habitat, which is not the same as where bees go. Ticks tend to live in places like leaf litter, ground cover, and shaded brush. Bees prefer flowers and blooming shrubs. Technicians treating for ticks have no reason to apply to blooms, and should not.
Because bees forage during warm daylight hours, you can avoid harming them by scheduling your applications for early morning or evening. Once the treatment dries and binds to the foliage, the remaining residue poses far less contact risk to these beneficial pollinators.
If you have lingering concerns, though, there are some things you can do. The first is to point out where your beehives or blooming plants are. Ask that they be avoided. Then ask about when treatment is conducted to make sure it doesn’t overlap with bee active hours. You can also ask for natural treatment, which many companies, Mosquito Squad included, provide.
If you want tick control that works around your pollinator plantings, Mosquito Squad of Greenwich can help. Mosquito Squad treats the leaf litter and shaded edges where ticks wait for a host, and will work around the areas you flag. This will help you protect your family with up to 90% reduction in pest activity on a recurring cycle.
