My jaw dropped when I cut open the ceiling of this bedroom apartment in Lawrenceville, GA. I was both shocked and impressed at the enormous size of the bee nest that I saw! Thousands and thousands of bees crawling on top of sheets of honey comb. I couldn't even see the edges of hive yet, because it was so big. I had to cut a bigger hole in the drywall than anticipated.
This turned to out to be a job you definitely would not want to tackle yourself or even call a local bee keeper for. This was a job that would require an insured and licensed professional bee removal service. Thankfully by now I had the experience necessary to successfully and permanently remove these bees. It would have freaked me out if I had encountered a honey bee colony of this size the first year I started doing bee removals.
It was probably a 2-3 year old bee hive and had reached about its maximum size. I would estimate 60,000-80,000 bees and 75 pounds of honey. The bees had gained entry through the dryer vent on the outside. This is a very common place for bees to enter. Many times there are gaps where the dryer vent and bathroom fan vent exit the house. These gaps leave access to the floor joists which are perfect nesting placing for honey bees and yellow jackets. Floor joists are usually large empty, dry, dark, and warm voids that the bees love. Once established in these place, the bee nests can grow extremely large.
The best way to get rid of honey bees in floor joists is to remove all the bees, comb, and honey. Leaving any part of the nest in the void, especially honey and pollen will attract many other pests. Some of these pests are roaches, hive beetle larva and wax moth larva which can multoply by the 1000s in a very short amount of time. Also the fermenting honey will likely damage the drywall and other building materials
To access the bee colony, I opened up the drywall ceiling and began vacuuming the bees up into a special bee vac for relocation. I cut out huge chucks of comb as honey was dripping everywhere. I put a lot of plastic down on the floor and walls to help keep the room clean. The entire nest was removed and the outside entry point sealed to keep bees from every being able to come back to that same location. The area where the nest was at was wiped clean. Then I covered the hole in the ceiling with plastic until the apartment's repair guys could come.
Southeast Bee Removal does live honey bee removal and relocation in Atlanta, middle and north Georgia, Greenville South Carolina, Birmingham, Montgomerry, and other parts of Alabama. We have fast service and we save the bees! All jobs are completed in one day or less and often include repairs. When we do the repairs, we guarantee that honey bees will not return to the exact location they were removed from. Please contact us for a free bee removal estimate or with any questions you may have!
