What to do about a bad honeybee problem?
Question by Lizzy: What to do about a bad honeybee problem?
the man that lives next door to me raises honeybees and at the end of last summer we started having a problem with them coming over here and getting in the house and i kept going and talking to him about it since me and my oldest son who is 5 is allergic to them. well it turned cold before it got to bad now that it is hot again it has started back i kept seeing them at the end of the house and i was not too worried about it since none had been seen inside. Today my son went to use the bathroom and they where EVERYWHERE!!! so i went and got the man again and come to find out he had been at there about 2 weeks ago and he GUESS he let a Queen escape and he THINKS they have a hive started under my house and i asked him what i could do about it… he said he would hate for me to do it but he guess kill them because he don’t know how to get that many back to there hives so now i am stuck trying to figure out what to do and i have no idea so any help would be great!!!
i live in SC and he lives right next door. I am going to make a few phone calls in the morning and see if i can find someone. The man has had bees for along time but he use to have them way off in the country but when him and his wife broke up he brought them here with him and i don’t think he should be able to have them with all the houses right here this might not be the city but there are a lot of houses right here and i am not the only 1 to have this problem today he gave me a can of ANT killer and told me tonight when they went it to spray and it would kill them but with me allergic i am scared to try and i wouldn’t think ANT killer would kill them either. I hate to kill anything that is living but with me and my 5 year old being allergic it worries me and then i have 2 even smaller children in the home and i don’t want to take a chance on any of them getting hurt
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I don’t know where you are? It seems just a little early for the bees to be splitting right now. The beekeeper doesn”t have much to say about when the bees leave. The old queen takes off with most of the field bees and they start a new hive when new queen hatches.
The bees may not even belong to your neighbor. They could have overwintered in your house and are just now making their spring debut..
Your problem is getting rid of the hive. contact the local beekeepers association. They will have someone willing to come and extract the bees from your house. If you are here in America contact your local county agricultural agent. They will have the phone numbers of people who are interested in picking up the bees.
I am one of the contact people in our area. I use a vacuum type box to draw then in. They don’t go through the suction . The beekeeper may have to open your wall to get them all out. The area has to be sealed off and cleaned out of honey and wax or it will draw later bees looking to set up housekeeping. Once I harvest enough of the honey for the bees to survive, I offer the rest to the people who gave me the swarm. I teach them to extract the honey and put it in jars or how to cut the combs. I loan them equipment to complete the task. I instruct them how to process the honey so as to preserve it for medication if they wish. I generally just eat mine. However, it is good for bee stings, and especially for healing burns.
The bees will use any cavity to set up a hive. Under your house or in the walls makes them little difference. If they under the house and the comb is open it would be simple to remove. The beekeeper will smoke the bees to calm them. Then the beekeeper will put the queen in a hive box and the others will soon follow. The only problem might be the nursery. The workers hate to leave them. The beekeeper will put the brood combs in foundations and set them in a hive with the queen. Then the bees will quickly follow.
The beekeeper should live at least 3 miles away or the field bees will return to the area that they were just taken from. You have to seal up any entrance ways to the old hive or the odor will attract passing bees.
The closer you are to the hive area the meaner the bees are. You may have some justification for being concerned. Their nest is evidently pretty close to the bathroom. Right now the bees are just trying to figure out what to do. You should get help pretty quickly if you call County agent. good Luck. If you were in my area, I’d be there in the morning.
Added Editing.
Check your municipal codes. If you are in an incorporated area there may be laws prohibiting beekeeping in residential communities. Unincorporated areas may not have any laws prohibiting bees. However, many communities have covenants etc that do prohibit dangerous animals that may include bees.
S.C. State University has some of the best Bee experts in the Nation. They are leaders in many areas including “small Hive Beatles and the Killer Bees AKA Africanized Honey Bees.” I believe one of the entomologists name is Delaplane? Your County extension agent should have a list of Beekeepers or Beekeepers clubs in the area. With the great bee die offs going on, you should have no trouble getting a Beekeeper to collect your bees and seal up the openings from under the house.
Ask them to clean up the wax, honey etc so the old left over hive won’t attract bees in the future.
The type of construction prevalent in S.C. coincidental to the prevailing temperatures generally allows bees easy access to the crawl space area. The plumbing and other features going through the floors are often not sealed tightly thus allowing bees etc. easy access to the living areas. Sealing up these areas would probably require opening the walls unless done from underneath. I hope this helped.
texter
May 30, 2014 at 2:24 pm