Are you talking bees or yellow jackets? I'm allergic to the stings, but I don't have a fear or problem with bees. It's just those hateful yellow jackets. In any case, anything blooming this time of year is going to be a magnet for both. I guess they're all desperate right now for carbohydrates and any food source is going to attract them including flowers.

My Joe Pye is blooming right now and I was expecting a huge increase in the number of insects visiting the flowers, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Kevin

I'm getting yellow jackets too, but the JP is completely covered with bees. I have lots of other flowers, too, but those only get a reasonable number of visits.

I have planted many things in my garden specifically for bees and other pollinators. That said, I have never had a problem gardening around plants with heavy bee traffic. When working flowers and gathering nectar and pollen, most bees (and other pollinators) are gentle and couldn't care less about your presence as long as you don't meddle with them directly. But as Kevin pointed out, however, yellow jackets can be quite aggressive. It is good to know what you are dealing with.

Very few plants resemble Joe Pye Weed, so it is hard to recommend a substitute. Also, plants with flowers that are "dense and not individually showy" tend to be the ones that attract a lot of pollinators. The only things that come to mind are certain asters, tall garden phlox and iron weed (Vernonia). But all of these will attract pollinators in abundance (although phlox tends to attract more moths and butterflies than bees).

I had the same thing happen with Eupatorium 'Big Umbrella'. One year it was very rainy and it got about 9 feet tall and towered over the perennials in that bed. So I moved it to the back of the garden and it's doing great.

Maybe you could try some Phlox paniculata with a medium pink color in the blooms as a substitute. I am also growing Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) which has a striking pink bloom. Although I didn't get to see the blooms this year because the deer have eaten them down less than 1 foot tall!

I don't generally worry about bees when they're in the garden, though. Even Yellow Jackets which are the most aggressive northern bee species seem fairly docile when they are pollinating or nectaring. Usually they get aggressive when you get near their nests.

Eupatorium Coelestinum might work (2'-3' tall). The flowers are not as dense, so there wouldn't be so many bees concentrated in one place.

E. coelestinum is an agressive spreader. Pretty, but a real fast spreader in good garden soil.

Is the issue that you want to remove the JP because it's too tall, too many bees, or both. I have to agree that it gets loaded with bees but I deadhead plants all around anything covered in bees and they really are quite docile. My taller JP was driving me crazy becuase I had to stake it from flopping over each year. So, a number of years ago I decided to start whacking back the taller late-summer fall bloomers like JP weed, ironweed, tall rudbeckias, etc...It works quite well. I'm not even careful about it. I just take shears and cut it down to about 2 1/2'. I'm not very scientific about it. I've found it works great to control the height. My JP that would normally be 8-9 feet gets to about 5'. Maybe next year you could experiment and try cutting it back early in the season to try to control the height? If it's a bee thing, then that's a whole other story. But I don't think there really is a substitute for joe pye's habit.

Eupatorium cannabinum Flore Pleno is much shorter. It does not produce seed according to some sources. It is a clumper.