It is spring 2022 and the bee removal season is just getting started.
Honey bees that have been mostly dormant through winter are becoming very active on warm days. The queen begins laying 2,000 eggs a day in the spring and early summer as hives go through a population explosion. During this time the hive will often swarm. This is when approximately half of the hive (up to 20,000 bees or more) will leave the orginal colony and move into to a new location to start another hive. Once honey bees have picked a location they like, they can move into their new home within a matter of minutes.
Super Swarm of 20,000 Plus Honey Bees
Southeast Bee Removal is a family owned business specializing in removing honey bees and bee hives and has years of experience! We will humanly remove the bees and relocate them. After removal of a bee colony from a structure, we will repair the access area with the original building materials and give a guarantee against reinfestation to that exact lcoation.
We are based out of Atlanta GA and service middle and north GA including metro Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, Augusta, Athens, and the surrounding area, eastern AL including Montgomerry and Birmingham, and the Greenville SC area.
Are you wondering wether you need an expert to remove a bee infestation or if you can tackle it yourself? Here are some things to keep in mind. Your are likely dealing with any where from 10,000-60,000 (or more) bees depending on the size and age of the hive. Removing honey bees from a structure is labor intensive, requires a good deal of knowledge, and can result in many stings if not done properly.
A one week old hive containing 20,000 bees.
The following methods do not work well for getting rid of honey bees.
1. Using soap and water and other “deterrents” to get the bees to leave. These do little to get honey bees to move from any location they have chosen as home. Even if you have only noticed the bees for a day it is unlikely you will get them to budge.
2. Spraying 3 or more cans of wasp or bee killer at the entry point. Spraying the entry point may kill a few hundred bees, but the bulk of the nest (up to 60,000 bees or more) is inside, behind insulation and walls and floor boards. The pesticide will unlikely penetrate far enough back to do anything to the bees. Even if you were successful at killing all the bees, there could be substantial honey comb and bee larva in the nest that will make a mess unless it is removed.
3. Seal the bees’ entry point. All this does is keep the bees from coming and going freely. You wont sees bees on the outside but the bees are still alive and probably have plenty of food and air to live a long time. The bees will begin looking for other ways to get back out. Many times they will start coming in the home. We have seen bees come in a home for more than 8 weeks straight after their entry point was sealed shut.
A colony containing 30,000 honey bees and 50 plus pounds of honey.
4. Try to smoke the bees out. I have seen this tried and it failed. Smoking bees is great for beekeepers working in the own hives in the backyard. However, if you smoke bees in a house, it usually drives them further into the house. Another problem with trying to smoke the bees out of a house is that it can be dangerous. You don’t want your house to catch on fire. I have seen a burned up shrub that was against a house, burned up from someone trying to smoke the bees out that were in an overhang above it.
5. Kill the bees, remove the honey comb, and repair the access area. Mission accomplished, right? Not necessarily. Unless the area is sealed properly, the pheromones left by the first hive will attract other colonies in the future. It is very likely bees will keep coming back. On one house the bees came back to the same spot three times in a matter of 5 years. The last time the home owners decided to call Southeast Bee Removal instead of doing it themselves. By the way, Southeast Bee Removal does live honey bee removal and relcoation with their removals and recommends trying to save the bees as a first choice. In most cases the bees can be saved.
6. Wait and see if the problem goes away on its own. I am an experienced beekeeper and I love bees, but I would not want them in my house. I have seen all the problems and damage they can cause if left alone. There is a possibility that someone would get stung. Also, the older a bee hive is the bigger and more difficult it will be to remove. Furthermore, the colony of bees will likely swarm in the spring (half the hive leaves and moves to a new location), and you risk having them moving into a second spot on your home or into your neighbors home.
These are some of the biggest no nos you want to avoid when considering what to do with a honey bee colony that has taken up residence in your home or business.
If you need advice/help in removing a honey bee colony you can contact Southeast Bee Removal for a free estiamte. We have lots of experience (we have removed 1,000s of bee hives) and love our job!
Helen, is located in the beautiful Appalachian mountains of northeast Georgia about 80 miles from Atlanta. It is a little German town and a fun place to visit. In fact, it is the 3rd most visited town in Georgia. It has over 200 specialty shops, a scenic state park, and is known for its Oktoberfest. It is a great town to come to for a nice quiet weekend getaway, especially if you have a log cabin home to go to.
A home owner was in for a surprise one day, when they went to spend time at their cabin. They discovered honey bees flying back and forth at the peak of their roof about 30 feet off the ground. A swarm of honey bees had found a perfect place to build their nest or so they thought. They choose the very top of this mountain home and had an entry point right underneath the shingles.
With all the trees and flowing plants that are in Helen, it is a natural habitat for honey bees. You just don’t want them in your house. So Southeast Bee Removal was called to take care of the bee problem.
It was a little hard to tell from the ground the exact entry point of the bee hive. After climbing on the roof I could see the bees were gaining access through a construction gap where the dormer roof meet the peak. There were two ways I could have accessed the bees. The first option would have been through the wooden tongue and groove ceiling of the upstairs bathroom. The second option was through the shingles at the top of the roof. I decided that going through the shingles would be the least amount of work and mess.
After opening the area up, I could see part of the hive. It was maybe a month old.
I carefully removed the entire bees nest including, all the bees, comb, and honey. We do live honey bee removal with the help of a specialized bee vac.
Some of the hive stuck to the section of plywood I cut out.
With the hive removed, I filled the void with fiberglass insulation to prevent re-infestation to the same location.
I also sealed the bees entry point and checked for other possible cracks on the other side of the dormer and sealed those as well.
The plywood and shingles went down without a problem. You wouldn’t even know that a bee hive had been removed from this location. I usually put a new piece of tar paper between the plywood and shingles to make sure it is extra water tight.
It wasn’t the easiest bee removal I have ever done but I did enjoy a great mountain view while I was removing the bees!
Got bees you need to get rid of? Contact us today for a free estiamte.
Not all bee removal services are the same. Prices and quality of work can vary greatly among pest control companies and amateur beekeepers. Knowing who to hire can be a tough decision, especially if this is your first time dealing with bees.
Huge Honey Bee Hive in the floor joist of a home that Southeast Bee Removal Rescued and Relocated!
Here Is What Makes Southeast Bee Removal Stand Out!
1. Licensed and Insured
2. We specialize in bees and nothing else
3. Repairs are included with most of our bee removals
4. We rescue and relocate honey bees
5. Work is guaranteed
-We are licensed and insured, we carry both liability insurance and workers comp. Bee removal companies, and beekeepers with cheap prices are likely not going to have much insurance if any.
-Bee removal is all we do. It is not a hobby or one of many other pest control services that we offer. We do bees and bee removals full time. When you hire us you are getting the most experienced and dedicated bee removal specialist available. We have been removing bee hives since 2012 and have removed 100s of bee nests in every location imaginable. There is not much we haven’t seen. We can recommend the best approach for removing the bees. We don’t use guess work in finding the bees either. We know right where the bees will be at before we remove any building material. Inexperienced beekeepers or pest control companies may have to make multiple cuts in your home before accurately finding the colony of bees. Also the whole process takes less than a day in most cases, from removal of the entire nest to repair of the access area.
-We have years of construction experience. Bees are located with minimal damage to your home. Repairs are included on most removals. Hire us, and you don’t need a separate company to come and close up the hole where the bees were at. Note: we repair drywall with the first coat of mud, shingles, vinyl siding, wood soffit, wood trim, and more. We do not repair brick, stucco, or stone. When we do the repairs we can give a guarantee against re-infestation as well.
We are highly experienced beekeepers who do LIVE honey bee removal and relocation. Some companies advertise live removal but still end up killing many of the colonies they remove because they say “it’s necessary in this case”. I have also heard of other companies “rescuing” the honey bees, only to dump them in a woods nearby. Bees dumped in woods after removal are going to die. They need special care by a beekeeper to survive. They are going to need food and sugar water and a warm shelter (bee box) to stay in. Though some bee colonies may require extermination most of the time it is totally unnecessary. Really, very few colonies need to be killed for safe removal. If a removal is done from inside the house, the room can be sealed off to contain the bees only to that room. After a live removal of this nature by Southeast Bee Removal, you will hardly know we have even been in your home.
-We will give a guarantee of our work and against re-infestation to the exact same location when we do the repairs. Honey bees are known for coming back to the same place they were removed from if the area is not sealed properly. Again, many beekeepers that offer low cost or even free bee removals do not guarantee against re-infestation. An area that is not sealed properly after the bees have been removed will likely get bees again within the next year to five years. I know this because I have seen it over and over again in the removals I have done. Also we do not charge for call backs of a bee problem. We guarantee the problem is fixed right the first time. If we do have to come out a second time, we will come out at no charge. Please give a minimum of a week for straggler bees to go away from the outside entry point location. It normal to have some of the field bees (bees that were out foraging while the bee removal was being completed) hang around this long. But there should be fewer and fewer every day until they are gone.
If you live in the following cities and have a structural honey bee infestation that you need taken care of, we are your company! We service:
Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, Augusta, Athens, Rome, North Georgia, Middle Georgia, Birmingham, Montgomery, Auburn, Gadsden, Fort Payne, Talladega, Eastern Alabama, Greenville South Carolina, Anderson South Carolina, and the surrounding Areas
We also provide additional services such as hornet and yellow jacket removal in the Atlanta metro areas.
Southeast Bee Removal is your bee expert for honey bee infestations in and around the Greenville area. Here is a bee colony we removed from the roof of a home in Clemson.
After removing the entire bee nest, we put the shingles back that we took off. Everything was sealed and caulked to prevent leaks and bees coming back in the future. You would never be able to tell that we had even removed bees after the work was done.
Picture of roof after repairs were done.
If you have honey bees in your roof or attic we can get rid of the bees for you in a humane way. We do not kill honey bees. Instead, we rescue and move them to a safe place. There, they can keep pollinating and making honey, away from your home!
Attics usually are not the ideal place for honey bees. The reason for this is attics just get too hot in the summer for the bees to survive. Wasps and yellow jackets can withstand more heat and I do see more of these in attics than I do honey bees. If honey bees build a new nest under the shingles in early spring, they can settle in before the heat arrives. However, when it does get hot, the sun beating on the shingles can melt the wax and comb that the bees are building. Their nest can break apart and fall down on the insulation. If it is a large colony, the bees will try to rebuild the nest only to have it melt again. The heat will limit how big a bee nest can get in this case. If the temperatures get very hot, the bees and the queen will leave their hive. They will abandon any wax, comb, and honey. The remaining parts of the hive will attract bees again when the weather cools down.
Here are the most common instances I have found, where honey bees can make a nest in the roof area of your attic.
If there is shade from trees, this can keep the attic cool enough for the bees to make a nest. This was the case for the bee removal in this Clemson home.
If there is spray foam, the attic will be well insulated against heat. Spray foam has become more popular especially on newer homes and I am seeing more bee hives in these places.
The last spot in an attic where honey bees can escape the heat is in a cricket or saddle. A cricket is a triangle built above the chimney to help divert water. If bees have built a nest in the saddle of the roof in can be accessed from the inside or outside. If the roof is high or steep than the attic would be the best place to remove the bees from.
Any work done from the attic or on the roof is best begun early in the morning before temperatures get hot.
Honey bees can build nests almost anywhere. We have found them in roofs, attics, eaves, columns, trees, walls, floors, garages, dormers, sheds, and more. If you have bees in any of these places or somewhere else and want them removed, give us a call/send us an email. If you have questions about what should be done we would be happy to answer them. Please send picture/s if possible of the bee problem. This will allow us to give you better advice on what should be done.
Thanks for taking the time to visit our site. We hope the information has been helpful!
