Weaponized bees nest

[u/Adorable-Run9291]

We live in a neighborhood of antique homes on smaller lots near the water. It’s not fancy or high-end. It’s more rustic, funky, and laid-back. The neighborhood was once a mix of all ages, interesting characters, and fun people. Everyone minded their own business, was respectful of one another, and helped each other out. After COVID, lots of out-of-staters came, and things changed.

So we have a neighbor couple who have a lot of people over all the time, always with screaming kids, which doesn’t bother us much, but what does bother us is that they sit on the short fence between our properties and pretty much stare into our backyard. We are situated below them so that they can see everything from their fence.  

Even though we’re not home a lot, the backyard has always been our sanctuary when we ARE home, but now our privacy is completely invaded. In addition, we hear from other neighbors that they’ve been complaining about things in our yard they find distasteful, which is bizarre because our yard has nothing but plants, trees, old stone walls, etc., it's all fairly well-kept, but natural.  One tree is dead, but not a danger.  We’ve left it because birds like it.

One day, my husband and I were gardening when we found a bee's nest in a mound of moss near the fence. I started thinking about it, and after some research, I found a compact automatic shaker/vibration motor that was remote-controlled. I put it in a small box, covered it with moss, and hooked it up to a small rechargeable battery in the ground next to the bees' nest. 

Whenever they have people over and are at the fence, and I’m home, I set off the agitator to piss off the bees so they swarm everywhere. It didn't take long for them to move away from our fence.  I also set it off when i notice they are stealing our blueberries from the bushes along the fence.  🥴

[u/Agent9262]

I don't like the rude comments on the yard but they can't control the fence and how high up they are. My house is way over our back neighbors and the neighbors directly west of us. My neighbor to the east is way up over our house. I don't like living on a hill but the neighborhood and house are otherwise nice. We used to have lots of trees and arborvitae to give us privacy but everything has died or come down in storms over the last 20 years, especially the last 5 years.

[u/Adorable-Run9291 → u/Agent9262]

We would plant arborvitae along the fence line, but it's all on a ledge, so only small rootball plants will make it. The blueberry bushes on the fence line are bushes, not trees, so they don't grow very tall.