This was a plot point on a British TV show called “Lark Rise to Candleford” that aired on PBS several years ago. (Brendan Coyle - Downton’s Mr. Bates - played the father of the protagonist.)
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I read about this in the kids’ book Swallows and Amazons & I’ve done it ever since. Sometimes I also quietly ask the bees to send away unwanted human visitors. Bees are said to be the guardians of the house – if they are well-treated.
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And of course then there are those of us who can’t face our troubles at the moment, and would rather not talk about them to anybody thank you very much…
oh and then apparently Google image search wants me to share this alternative solution that probably most of us are already employing…
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You know those large knobby tires some Jeeps have? I made a joke saying the reason they sound like that and can travel on soft terrain with out sinking is because they are full of bees.
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What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story by P[amela] L[yndon] Travers of Mary Poppins fame. The title essay examines this tradition of talking to the bees.
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I’m 99% sure there are people out there who only whisper their troubles to their knobby-tired Jeep.
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You may be thinking of hornets, as there are many fine and lovely solitary wasps that seem pretty chill around my house. Some of them are even potters. See:
A wasp made that!
But hornets, they are totally assholes.
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Had the amazing experience of seeing potter wasps in the garden a few years ago.
Photo on Flickr
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Solitary wasps are so tiny and intricate, some of them look almost machined.
There were some beautiful metallic blue-green ones hanging around on the monarda punctata that I have yet to ID.
Wonderful creatures, though granted they have horrifying food plans for their kiddies. 
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Really beautiful photos! that one and your whole flickr stream. Bookmarked for drawing/painting inspiration!
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re-post
The girl who swallowed bees
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I know! So macabre. When I remembered that, and the meanness of some paper wasps, I almost came back to edit my post, but decided not to. They are artists.
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Why would I tell them? It’s none of their beeswax.
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Thanks for the kind words!
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Where do you live that you have these? We get mud daubers, but they build large nests, not little pots. When I finally cleared off some old boxes of my “deck” that had been there WAAAAYYYY too long, I had like 20lbs of mud dauber nests in there. I’ve broken them open in the past and find paralyzed spiders inside meant for the young. Fucking brutal.
Nice macro photography.
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I’m in Los Angeles. I’ve only seen the potter wasps a few times. It’s odd how one year, we’ll see lots of on species of something in the garden, and then never see them again. One year, we had an infestation of hundreds of stick insects. There was a run of a few years with lots of praying mantises.
We have a lot of the mud daubers like the ones in your picture, as well as paper wasps. Both like gathering under the eaves, or on outdoor lighting fixtures. What’s weird is they’re both normally vegetarian, except as larva. And yeah, the adults do unspeakable things in gathering animal protein for the larvae 
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Do you really want to tell them about Trump and make them cry?
I’d tell the roaches and rats about him
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I talk to my bees. I remember when my father died I sat down next to our one hive at the time and I told them a bunch of stories and thoughts and about my old dad. And just a few years ago when I had to collect my little man’s broken cat body from the road in front of the house, the next day I told my bees about it through tear filled eyes. I tell them good thing too, and always make sure I address them politely when I have to open up one of the hives. I’d like to think they appreciate it, or at the very least it doesn’t annoy them. They’ve never stung me since I installed the first hive (and that was a batshit comedy of errors and mistakes that deserved a bit of stinging to keep me focused!), so I think we must have reached some sort of balance.
On a side note: if you ever get the chance to walk along with a spring time swarm of honey bees, do it! It’s the most amazing sensation of having all these wonderful and buzzing creatures flying around you!
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I found a decent sized stick insect and was going to try to keep it in a terrarium, but it died on me… In hindsight I should have tried misting it?
I did learn how to tell stick insect eggs from stick insect poop.
And we get paper wasps too, mostly the smaller one with the hex cells.
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