Beehive Removal

[caseydog]

This is kind of a funny story. I had a plastic gallon of honey stored in the basement. I forgot about it. It was a gift from the guy I was dating at the time, for helping harvest honey. Over the next few years the sides started to suck in because the moisture was migrating out. The honey got thicker and thicker and then crystalized starting at the bottom. Ya see, I apparently only found men attractive if they were bee keepers or they were potential bee keepers. (so not true! it only looks that way)

I had a beehive once. But, you probably wouldn't like how that worked out. I didn't plan to be a beekeeper. I came home from a week long business trip, and found my house full of bees, live and dead. Thousands of them. The set up a hive in one of the soffits in my house. It cost me a boatload of money, and I didn't get any honey out of the deal.

I called an exterminator, and he saw the dead bees, and told me he couldn't, by law, do anything about it. That would have been a $150 fix. I had to call a beekeeper, who charged me $850 to kill the beehive, which is what the exterminator could have done for $150. Add in the two nights in a hotel at $135 a night, and I'm down $1,120. And no honey!

Oh, before anyone says anything, it is legal for a beekeeper to kill a beehive if it is inside of your house, and there is no way to remove them short of tearing apart your house.

Apologies to Taxi for going off-topic, but blissful started it.

CD

 

[blissful]

I had a beehive once. But, you probably wouldn't like how that worked out. I didn't plan to be a beekeeper. I came home from a week long business trip, and found my house full of bees, live and dead. Thousands of them. The set up a hive in one of the soffits in my house. It cost me a boatload of money, and I didn't get any honey out of the deal.

I called an exterminator, and he saw the dead bees, and told me he couldn't, by law, do anything about it. That would have been a $150 fix. I had to call a beekeeper, who charged me $850 to kill the beehive, which is what the exterminator could have done for $150. Add in the two nights in a hotel at $135 a night, and I'm down $1,120. And no honey!

Oh, before anyone says anything, it is legal for a beekeeper to kill a beehive if it is inside of your house, and there is no way to remove them short of tearing apart your house.

Apologies to Taxi for going off-topic, but blissful started it.

CD

I take full responsibility for going off the rails on this thread, consequences be darned.
@caseydog, that is an amazing story and you had bad luck all the way around! OMGosh so much bad luck. Bee keepers here usually just gather the swarm and leave. They don't all charge, many take them to start new hives, so they do it for free. The exterminator should have dealt with it. Now if they are into the walls it can be damaging to the house to remove them.

Some people that bee keep have set up bee vacuums, they are garage vacs (those big canisters) set up with the right kind of filters, low suction, long hoses, suck up the bees, they might charge $50 but they take the bees away.
It's probably good advice to say this: call the most local beekeeping group in your area and ask for the names and numbers of local beekeepers that will help. Ask them how they might help before they come out and costs that might be involved.
Did you have damage to the house too you had to repair?
Legal? I have no idea, killing bees is not against the law as far as I know.

All that and NO HONEY! Life is so unfair. I'm so sorry that happened to you.
@taxlady my fault.

 

[caseydog]

I take full responsibility for going off the rails on this thread, consequences be darned.
@caseydog, that is an amazing story and you had bad luck all the way around! OMGosh so much bad luck. Bee keepers here usually just gather the swarm and leave. They don't all charge, many take them to start new hives, so they do it for free. The exterminator should have dealt with it. Now if they are into the walls it can be damaging to the house to remove them.

Some people that bee keep have set up bee vacuums, they are garage vacs (those big canisters) set up with the right kind of filters, low suction, long hoses, suck up the bees, they might charge $50 but they take the bees away.
It's probably good advice to say this: call the most local beekeeping group in your area and ask for the names and numbers of local beekeepers that will help. Ask them how they might help before they come out and costs that might be involved.
Did you have damage to the house too you had to repair?
Legal? I have no idea, killing bees is not against the law as far as I know.

All that and NO HONEY! Life is so unfair. I'm so sorry that happened to you.
@taxlady my fault.

At least here in Texas, exterminators are not allowed to exterminate honey bees. Wasps, hornets and yellow jackets, sure. But not honey bees. The beekeepers also have to have certain certifications from the state to do the job. You can't just call a beekeeping club.

If you have a beehive in a tree in your yard, any beekeeper can move it, and probably do it for free. But not kill them. My hive was in a place that made it impossible to get to the hive without tearing apart a section of my house. I had to hire a certified professional to kill the hive.

The beekeeper was able to kill the hive without any damage to the house, other than a few small drill holes. All he really had to do was find the hive, where the queen was, then he used some kind of powder shot up through the drill holes to get to the hive, and kill the queen. Once the queen is dead, the entire hive dies over the next 12-24 hours.

Beekeepers here that are certified to do this work are few and far between, and they know it. They name their price, and you pretty much have to pay it.

I posted this story on some forum right after it happened, and got a major beatdown. "I can't believe you killed a beehive!!!" It was like, so what if you have to tear down half your house, bees are sacred. It wasn't like I wanted to kill the bees, but I wasn't going to do thousands of dollars worth of damage to my house to save one bee hive.

CD

 

[blissful]

@caseydog you'd practically need an attorney to clarify the logic in the statements made to you and on what you need, in an emergency. Money making statements, partial truths.

Texas Apiary Inspection Service
Honey Bee Removal Informational Document

https://research.entomology.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2018/03/Bee-Removal-FAQ.pdf

tag based on what is being viewed. We filter the output of wp_title() a bit - see agriflex_filter_wp_title() in functions.php. --> <title> Bee Removal - Texas Apiary Inspection Service (TAIS)

txbeeinspection.tamu.edu

"Most beekeepers do not have a pest control license, meaning they are not allowed to use any chemicals during the removal process."
Bee removal experts have no certification-it is unregulated business and they can't use illegal pesticides. There are legal pesticides they can use for killing them.
Exterminators can use all kinds of pesticides and that is certified by Texas. It's not illegal to kill honeybees in home structures, it's illegal to kill honeybees in managed hives.
The second guy was a bee removal expert. (he may also be certified as an exterminator if he chose to do that.)
I agree the first exterminator should have killed them. Then it was up to you to identify if the hive would pose any problems in the structure now or in the future.

**moderator, would you please remove the parts of this thread regarding bee removal and put it in a thread on Bee Removal, under off topic or culinary gardening?**

 

[blissful]

@dragnlaw thank you for rescuing the bee removal discussion!

 

[HeyItsSara]

oh wow!!!

 

[blissful]

@caseydog said "It wasn't like I wanted to kill the bees, but I wasn't going to do thousands of dollars worth of damage to my house to save one bee hive."
People say stupid things when it isn't their house! People say stupid things when the children harmed aren't their children! People say stupid things all the time. When a person goes over to the beehive, knocks over a brood box, believe me, bees will defend themselves and their home! Be like a bee and defend your house.

2 years ago before we kept bees, we had some flying insect that found a place in the siding, near the foundation to start a hive. We could hear the hum of the hive. Tiny entrance.

Before even identifying the insect I'd decided that If they were honey bees and if they'd put comb under the siding, we weren't going to have the siding removed at that point in time. We'd kill the hive, seal it up, re-side the house when we had time to hire contractors for that. It was fall and we'd have to put the money together and think this through. (mitigate the problem first)

It turned out the humming sound of the hive was wasps. The humming was coming from the hive, right at the foundation, in the house, top of the basement wall, under the insulation. The hive was long, 18 to 24 inches, big (it might have been bigger, it's been two years since then). We sprayed the hive which killed the wasps. (all life is sacred but we had to manage it) After they died, we removed the hive, (thank god it wasn't comb under the siding), caulked all the areas of entry, and any potential entries. It was huge. We cut it out and dumped it in big garbage bags, removed lbs and lbs of remnants of it. It was gross. Replaced the insulation.

 

[caseydog]

The second guy was a bee removal expert. (he may also be certified as an exterminator if he chose to do that.

I agree the first exterminator should have killed them.

I think this is the case, like I said, the beekeeper had to have some kind of certification to do this job. Perhaps he was both a beekeeper and exterminator. As for the exterminator, I called two of them, and both said they could not legally kill honeybees. Perhaps they were wrong, but I'm not an exterminator or a beekeeper, and needed to get the bees out of my house. ASAP.

IIRC, the beekeeper did not use an insecticide, per se. It was a whitish powder that he said killed the bees the same way boric acid kills crawling insects without strong chemicals. For all I know, it may have been boric acid. He also said that the main goal was to kill the queen, because the rest of the hive would die. He was right about that.

CD

 

[caseydog]

**moderator, would you please remove the parts of this thread regarding bee removal and put it in a thread on Bee Removal, under off topic or culinary gardening?**

CD

 

[taxlady]

View attachment 70507

CD

I don't mind. I got the info I was hoping to get from this thread. The rest was entertainment. I have been happily following along.

 

[caseydog]

Going off topic is an internet forum staple. I did at least apologize... and throw blissful under the bus.

CD

 

[dragnlaw]

psst... hey casey!... better go get your eyes checked.
Hate to tell you but that's not a bus.

 

[blissful]

Ouch ouch ouch, how painful, owwwie.....NOT.

@caseydog, I just want to say I didn't like your second exterminator/beekeeper. Being vague strikes me as being evasive. He could have/should have told you what he was using.
The main goal was to kill all the bees, not just the queen. Hives can go a season without a queen. He wasn't being entirely honest. Whatever he put in the hive killed bees and the queen. Why say the queen needed to die so the bees would die? More evasiveness and that'll be $850, thank you.
If you spray wasp killer on bees, they die.
I'll lend you a bee suit to stay safe.

In other states, beekeepers may (not all do) charge you for their time, or material only, if they can keep the bees. They might charge a little more if they can't keep the bees. There is a whole youtube following of these people removing or killing hives in home structures. Jeff Horchoff Bees has 69 videos on removing bees. https://www.youtube.com/@JeffHorchoff

 

[caseydog]

Ouch ouch ouch, how painful, owwwie.....NOT.

@caseydog, I just want to say I didn't like your second exterminator/beekeeper. Being vague strikes me as being evasive. He could have/should have told you what he was using.
The main goal was to kill all the bees, not just the queen. Hives can go a season without a queen. He wasn't being entirely honest. Whatever he put in the hive killed bees and the queen. Why say the queen needed to die so the bees would die? More evasiveness and that'll be $850, thank you.
If you spray wasp killer on bees, they die.
I'll lend you a bee suit to stay safe.

In other states, beekeepers may (not all do) charge you for their time, or material only, if they can keep the bees. They might charge a little more if they can't keep the bees. There is a whole youtube following of these people removing or killing hives in home structures. Jeff Horchoff Bees has 69 videos on removing bees. https://www.youtube.com/@JeffHorchoff

What he charged me was what the market allowed him too. I can't begrudge him that. I charge more for my work than he does for his, and make no apologies for my rates. There may have been a cheaper alternative, but when you come home to a house full of bees, there isn't a lot of time to sit down at the computer and research bees and beekeeping. I sat in my car and started making phone calls.

Bottom line is that he told me what was going to happen, and it happened. I paid him to do something, and he did it.

After it was over, I spent a whole day cleaning up dead bees. They were everywhere. Then I had a few stiff drinks, and a good laugh. It was just such an unexpected, and rather bizarre event.

BTW, the hundreds (seemed like thousands) of bees that died inside the living area of my house were not exposed to the white powder at all. The beekeeper told me that they made their way into the house, and couldn't find their way back to the hive, so they died. The biggest accumulation of dead bees were near windows, because they were trying to get out of the house.

CD

 

[blissful]

I hear ya! I get it.
There can be 60-80 thousand bees in an average hive......so there probably were thousands that died (most likely of lack of water, pollen, and nectar) in the house.

 

[caseydog]

I hear ya! I get it.
There can be 60-80 thousand bees in an average hive......so there probably were thousands that died (most likely of lack of water, pollen, and nectar) in the house.

One weird thing is that they must have made their way into the house through the attic, and gaps around the attic door (which I fixed afterwords). There isn't any other way from that soffit to the living space. But, I didn't find many dead bees in the attic. Very few, in fact. That doesn't make sense, to me.

BTW, the bees were going in and out of the soffit through gaps between the exterior trim and brick veneer on the house. There was a huge swarm outside at the spot they were getting in. I had that fixed, too.

CD

 

[blissful]

CD, is it possible the attic is very dark, no windows in it? They just kept flying through the attic towards the light which was downstairs? Would that be possible?

 

[dragnlaw]

I imagine that is the answer bliss. Bees, as I'm pretty sure most everyone knows (if they think about it) - are not nocturnal. Which makes it obvious that they would then gravitate towards anything 'lighter' than where they are.

How very sad for the bees.
and yes, casey, I would have done the same.

 

[caseydog]

CD, is it possible the attic is very dark, no windows in it? They just kept flying through the attic towards the light which was downstairs? Would that be possible?

That is certainly plausible.

CD

 

[blissful]

BTW, the bees were going in and out of the soffit through gaps between the exterior trim and brick veneer on the house. There was a huge swarm outside at the spot they were getting in. I had that fixed, too.

CD

I needed to think about this BTW for a bit.
Since they were going in and out-they were mostly all alive right? If it was nearing sunset, the bees in the fields, the worker bees were all going home and wanting to get into the hive. They don't stay out at night. If it was after sunrise, or mid day, they would be leaving the hive. There is a waggle dance they do also to signal to the other workers where the honey flowers are, which looks like going into and out of the hive at the entrance.

If 'the swarm' was live bees cleaning out the hive, there might have also been a pile of dead bees. They take out the dead bees and remove them from the hive usually dropping them right out of the entrance area.