Too Many Bees - Now in Roof

So I was noticing an awful lot of bees the past two days, and it appears they have made a home in the roof or wall of my house. On the picture below notice the upper window covered in plywood. (Thanks Hurricane Isaac). At the peak is where they are getting inside. They have done this before a few years ago but on the outside, huge honeycombs hanging from under the roof. Now I think they are in the wall.

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They are getting in by entering along the ridges of the soffit, so caulking is impractical. How can I encourage them to leave? Especially with the garden "buffet" right downstairs? I had one bee torment me for over an hour while planting a 4x8 box yesterday. They are not getting behind the covered window, they are going in the roof. I can hear them in the wall in the attic. I will not poison them. Any beekeepers out there?

I was just going to suggest - before I finished reading your post - that a bee keeper would be able to get them out. It sounds like a queen decided to swarm for a new home. Not that I would expect anyone to live with them.

When I was a little girl we lived in my grandparents old house. In the summer I noticed a sticky substance on the stoop leading to the 2nd floor. Being a kid, I stuck my finger on it and then tasted it. Yikes. It was very sweet. When I showed it to my parents they noticed that a lot of bees were in a window nearby. Sure enough. They had made a hive behind the siding. The house wasn't insulated so they had the entire width of the 2x4 studs to make a new home. Don't recall how my Dad got them out - but he did.

Package yours up and send them to we who don't see many bees. JK of course.

im sorry about your bees, but your garden is gorgeous! so green and lush! i have no idea on what to do tho sorry!!

I was recently reading about a relatively new law in Florida that states any one who does a cut out to extricate bees from a structure has to have a pest control license number.

I suggest you contact a local beekeeper, or beekeeping club and see if any of them can do the cut out or otherwise encourage the bees to move into a hive box.

Really the last thing you want to do is spray them with insecticide to kill them and then have all that honey left within the soffit space. That will lead lead to a whole other set of troubles.

Good luck.

A quick Google search led me here
http://ecobeeremoval.com/

thebarley7 wrote:They are not getting behind the covered window, they are going in the roof. I can hear them in the wall in the attic. I will not poison them. Any beekeepers out there?

When I was a child, we had bees in the wall of our old house (no insulation) for several years. We did not bother them, and they did not bother us. But they gave us beautiful gardens. They were still there when we moved away while I was in fifth grade.

As long as they are healthy and strong, they are unlikely to pose any problems. If they are hovering around you, it's probably something sweet smelling on you or your clothing that attracts them. If the entrance is high, no one is apt to block their flight path and get stung reflexively by a returning worker.

If they are poisoned, or become weakened, then the stored honey will no longer be kept dry. In humid weather, the honey will absorb moisture, ferment, and rupture the cells that hold it. Then it will cause you all kinds of problems.

A lady near here was charged $300 by an exterminator who killed the bees (took all of ten minutes), then he left. In the next few weeks, the residual honey did just as I said, and she incurred $1100 in costs of replacing drywall, which the fermenting honey destroyed.

So it's important to let a real beekeeper do the job, if you must have them removed. Make sure every bit of honeycomb is removed. Then pack the cavity full of fiberglass and seal it well, because the odor can advertise the location to a new swarm someday.

Beekeepers can be found through your county extension - which should have a list of local beekeepers. Oftentime fire departments and local police also have lists of beekeepers.

You can find beekeepers by looking at honey labels at local produce stands. (What? You say you don't buy local honey? The name and address of a local beekeeper on the label is your best assurance that you aren't buying -frequently contaminated - Chinese honey!)

Another way to find find beekeepers is to contact a local association. You can find a list of associations at: http://www.beeculture.com/content/whoswho/

Haven't had this issue before but if I did Id call a bee keeper.

I found this with a web search Eco Bee Removal
they are out of Florida.

Pollinator many great points to ponder! Hoggar thanks for the link!

A good bee keeper will cut the combs down and fit them into hive frames with elastic bands and get them & the queen in a big specialy made up carboard box ( temp hive ) in about two hours with the vast majority of bees .. if left in place over night the whole lot will be in with the queen in the new home and if removed before sunrise they can be taken three and a half miles away where they will be transferred into a new hive . No bees from this hive will find their way back to the original nest .

All traces of the old comb will need to be rmoved for it was my experience ( 20 years or so with 50 hives ) that other bees would soon find the scents of necatars and honey and think it an ideal place to set up their new home .. if it was late in the year you'd be plagued by wasps as well .

I used to dust the removal site down after I'd hot water washed & dried things off with a good residual pesticide to stop other foragers taking the good news back to their own hive that there was something to be found where I'd cleaned things up . It is diffficult to totally remove all traces of scents , it is fairly common for people who have been cursed / blessed with a feral nest to keep on getting them unless Varroa or other bee complaints kill off all the other colonies for miles around .
Sometimes I lit a sulphur candle in a roof void that I'd cleared out if it was safe so that all the wood work became impregnated with sulphur & therefore un attractive to bees & wasps for years and years .


For comb in a killed nest it is indeed imperative to remove it for reason previously covered due to sweating and weeping through even very solid looking brick work .

I probably earnt as much money sorting out swarms and established feral nests in walls , blocked off chimney's , floors & roof voids as I did selling a couple of tons or more of honey each year .

I rarely charged less than £400 and my best paid job was over £4000 which was an old sandstone build house in the town of Barnack Lincolnshire. It was over 350 yrs old 15 feet up off the ground , every bit had to be put back as is was when I started , using the virtually the same techniques as the original builders .

One thing to consider is that in your region there are africanized honey bees; Particularly difficult to deal with. I REALLY like the philosophy and testimonials I am seeing on the ecobee removal site.

Plantoid, do you have any photos of that Lincolnshire cut out that you did? I sure would like to see them if you do.

Went out this morning and they are all gone. Didn't have to do anything. Just found out they just put out bee boxes about 10 acres over, maybe they went there. Went to get mulch at the recycle place about a mile a way and the bees were swarming all over the office trailer you couldn't even go in to pay. It was like a horror movie, sitting in the truck and them all over the cab. One even got in and stung my son.

We did take down huge honeybombs that they made hanging from the roof pitch one year. We are getting ready to paint the house, so maybe when we are up there we can caulk and bleach before we paint so they won't be attracted there again.

Did have a few nice bumblebees in the garden this morning.

Thanks for all the advice everyone. This is a great forum.

Donna in Cape Coral, Florida