8 Items That Will Ruin Your Perfect Picnic

Sunny weekends heading to your favorite green space to feast on a freshly made picnic with your family and friends are the best kind of days off. Your picnic basket is loaded up with your favorite summer foods, the wine is cooling on ice, and you haven't forgotten the paper plates, disposable cutlery, and plastic cups. The day is going to be perfect.

But then you arrive at your picnic destination, sit in the dappled shade of the tree, unpack your food, and the bees start buzzing around your head, the wasps swarm towards you, and the ants start crawling around your feet and over your plate. Do your best to avoid those pesky insects at every picnic this summer by leaving these picnic items at home.

Brightly Colored Plates

Serving your food on brightly colored plates, will immediately attract bees, flies, and wasps, no matter what food — if any — you've put on them. Serve everything on plain white paper plates to stop the bugs being attracted to your picnic before you've even eaten anything.

Burgers and Hot Dogs

It's a little known fact that summer wasps love meat. Any meat-rich, protein-heavy food that you're serving at your summer picnic will attract all the wasps to the tastiest part of your picnic. Either guard your food carefully, or swap the meat-heavy meals for some lighter vegetarian fare.

Chocolate

If it's a perfect summer's day, chocolate is likely to ruin your picnic as it will melt everywhere and turn everything into a sticky, sugary mess. What's even worse, this chocolaty mess will attract all the wasps, bees, and flies to the chocolate itself, and to everything that the melted cocoa has contaminated.

Fresh Fruit

Fresh fruit, whether chopped or just perfectly ripe, is a delicious and healthy summer treat. But if you're going on a picnic, it's best to leave those summer fruits at home. The insects will swarm to them and start feeding off their natural sugars, which are the bugs' and bees' absolute favorite treat.

Fruit Juice

Fruit juice smells almost as good as fresh fruit to all the bees and wasps. A glass or bottle of fruit juice left out in the sun will soon be covered in insects as they kidnap your drink, leaving you having a very thirsty day out.

Honey

Obviously you're not stupid enough to take a pot of honey with you on a picnic, as that would be simply asking for the bees to swarm in and attack you. But you should also avoid putting honey in anything you make, whether it's in a simple peanut butter and honey sandwich for the kids, is used to sweeten a salad dressing, or is in your homemade dessert, the bees will sniff it out and will start flying aggressively toward you.

Red Wine

It's not just obviously sugary drinks that will attract all the insects to your picnic. Red wine is a key culprit for attracting flies. Leave your glass of wine unattended for a few minutes, and when you come back to take a sip you'll be greeted by the rather unpleasant scene of a glass covered in, and filled with, drowning fruit flies.

Soda

An ice-cold soda may be just what you're craving on a long day spent in the sunshine, but it's what the wasps are craving too. You're best to use your soda as a trap for the bees and wasps by placing an open bottle, can, or glassful, at a safe distance from your picnic, and letting the insects feed on it, rather than spending the day swatting the bugs away as you try to take a swig of your favorite sweet drink.