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How most try to Get Rid
of Bees
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The first instinct of most people when they discover a honey bee
infestation is to get rid of the bees with pesticides. We often get calls from customers that have tried repeatedly to kill
an infestation with chemicals and by the third of fourth attempt, they finally realize that spraying chemicals just doesn't
seem to work. Even if the bees go away for a couple days or even weeks, the problem seems to recur again and again. In addition,
spraying chemicals in a cavity that the bees are building in can create a bigger problem since it usually just forces the
bees further into the cavity, or into another cavity. Now you have honeycomb being built in 2 places on your property.
The first problem with trying to get rid of honey
bees that have built a bee hive inside your house with over -the-counter OR professional pesticides is that the chemicals cannot  penetrate the wax that the queen puts over the baby cells. This means even if you kill most of the bees, there is a good
chance when the larvae hatch they can resume building in that cavity or another on the premises. Since a queen can lay up
to 2,000 eggs a day, just a few days of brood surviving can re-emerge into a serious infestation. In addition, as we've
seen many times, the chemicals often cannot get past the honeycomb to kill bees that have moved further back into the
cavity with the queen. Very often they simply move to another part of the cavity and continue building. In the unlikely event
that you do manage to kill all the bees, you've created another problem- nothing is maintaining the honeycomb.
 After the colony is gone, we MUST REMOVE the nest. If the nest is
NOT REMOVED, the wax combs, normally cooled by the bees flapping their wings, will melt and allow honey to drip down through
the walls or the roof. Honey stain can often not be removed and the viscous honey rots walls
and sheetrock so walls may need to be replaced. As well, the freed honey attracts robber bees,
wasps and other swarms, in addition to becoming a buffet for a number of creatures- Roaches, Rats, Raccoons, Possums, maggots
and anything else that can feed on the honey. The comb wax will attract wax moths that may persist for several years. The
Small Hive Beetle larvae tunnels through combs of honey, feeding and defecating, causing discoloration and fermentation
of the honey. The dead bees will attract
carpet beetles (not the ones that sing "Let it Be") and
worse, the dead bees will decay and smell very badly.
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How to Properly Get Rid
of Bees To perform proper
bee removal requires two steps- locating the hive and extracting the honeycomb. While this may sound simple, it is not always easy. If the swarm is noticed right when it moves in, an immediate application of
pesticides is often sufficient to deal with a new infestation. But a honey bee colony can build about a palm full of honeycomb
per day, so progress is rapid. Often the hive will not get noticed until it has grown substantially, at which point there are clear markers that
there is established honeycomb somewhere on the premises. One of these markers are small clumps of yellow and orange on the
hind legs of the bees returning to the hive, which indicates they are bringing back resources for the colony to continue growing.
Once the colony has
established itself, complete bee hive removal is the only guaranteed method for  eliminating an infestation. The first step is examining all cavities near where the bees are entering the premises, both interior
and exterior. Once the honeycomb is located, the cavity must be exposed and the honeycomb extracted.
3/30/10 - Honey bee swarm removals - Florida
Received from:
Catherine Zettel Nalen
UF/IFAS Honey Bee Research and Extension Lab
Tel # 352-273-3932
czettel@ufl.edu
Spring is here, which
means honey bee swarm season also is here. Calls to our office on campus and county Cooperative Extension Service (CES)
offices around the state have increased as swarming season gets underway. The State of Florida has a series of recommendations
for handling honey bee swarms and nesting colonies, and it is very important that all CES offices are aware of the recommendations.
We placed additional information at the end of this page for those of you who want to know more. That said, we recommend
that all county faculty and other interested persons read the first part of this page.
The State
of Florida recommendation established by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service's (FDACS) Apiary
Section is that all wild colonies or swarms located in close proximity to people or animals should be eradicated by a pest
control operator (PCO) trained in honey bee colony eradication and removal.
Further, FDACS recommends that swarm
and nesting bee calls not be forwarded to beekeepers but only to trained PCOs. If you are interested in understanding the
reasoning for this recommendation... Additional Information Concerning Nesting Honey Bees:
The reason FDACS recommends eradicating swarms or nesting honey bee colonies located in close proximity to people or animals
is due to the presence of African honey bees in Florida. African honey bees (AHB) and European honey bees (EHB) (the latter
is the kind beekeepers usually keep) bees cannot be distinguished from one another with the unaided eye. The only way to
identify African bees is to send a sample of 50 freshly collected bees in alcohol to the Apiary Section of FDACS (Jerry
Hayes - hayesg@doacs.state.fl.us.
Once received, the samples undergo rigorous morphological computerized testing
to determine the bee race. Obviously, it is not safe to tell a customer to collect a sample of bees from a living bee colony.
As such, the state recommends that the suspect colony be eradicated to avoid any negative encounter.
Additionally,
European and African honey bees are capable of interbreeding, meaning a hive that has been in a tree quietly for years may
become Africanized suddenly if, following a swarming of the colony, the new queen in the colony mates with Africanized drones
during her mating flight.
Besides general safety, nesting honey bees and swarms become a liability issue for
the homeowner. If the suspect bees are Africanized and attack a neighbor's child, pet, etc., the homeowner is liable
for the attack because they knew the nest was there and chose not to follow state recommendations. In Texas, 50% of African
bee attacks are reported to occur on victims who knew the nest was there but did nothing about it since "the bees seemed
calm."
The state does not recommend that beekeepers collect these hives or swarms as they once did. It only
takes about 5 seconds for African bees to become defensive if disturbed, and they will travel much farther from the nest
than European bees. The PCOs on FDACS list have been trained to handle nesting honey bee colonies and should know the proper
procedures for handling an African bee nest.
Many people are aware that honey bee populations are suffering and
see a dichotomy between the "save the bees" and "eradicate the bees" messages. However, this dichotomy
is false. Colony Collapse Disorder is a managed bee colony problem and not an African bee one. So eradicating a nesting
colony on ones property does little, if anything, to the total number of wild honey bee colonies in Florida. Homeowners often
assume that a newly arrived swarm "can't be Africanized because they haven't bothered anyone". The problem
is that neither AHB nor EHB swarms are defensive for the first several weeks, but once baby bees are present in the comb,
AHB colonies become dangerously defensive. This behavior will often first shows itself in a dangerous attack.
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