Got bees at your home, business, or apartment in Alpharetta, Georgia, and wondering what to do?
Southeast Bee Removal can help. Our services include live removal and relocation of honey bees, as well as removing the entire nest, repair of the access area, and a guarantee against re-infestation to the exact same location.
Honey Bee Removal from an outside decorative column/post on a home in Alpharetta. The very dark black honeycomb at the top is older, while the lower section of honeycomb is fairly new.
Removing a honey bee colony is not as simple as just having a beekeeper come out to “smoke out” the bees and make them leave. Or having a company spray a “deterrent” where the bees are at, to get them to leave. Home remedies such as peppermint oil or soapy water are not likely to work either. Once a colony of honey bees is established, which happens almost immediately upon arrival at their new home, there is not much you can do to make them leave their hive, besides opening the area up and removing the beehive by hand. It takes a good bit of experience with both bees and construction to properly perform a bee removal job.
What surprises people is how quickly honey bees can set up shop. It is not uncommon for a swarm of 10,000-20,000 bees to move into a house or apartment within one hour. It usually happens so quickly that most people don't see the actual move in process. If you are fortunate enough to see the bees come, it may look like a black cloud of bees in the sky accompanied with a very loud buzzing sound. It is almost a little freaky quite honestly. Once the bees come and move in, there will be traffic coming and going from their entry point, but the bulk of the bees will be inside the structure. They waste no time in building wax combs for the queen to lay eggs, of which she can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in the spring and summer. It is crazy how fast honey bees can build a hive at this rate.
One time while doing a bee inspection at an apartment, I noticed 1000s of bees flying in the air. They were landing on the apartment and entering a crack, which gave access to the floor joist. In the video, I explain that the bees originally seen by the apartment manager before Southeast Bee Removal came out, had been scout bees. When I came out to do the bee inspection, I happened to catch the entire swarm in mid process of moving in. Even though I was standing there with 1000s of bees flying around me, I was not stung at all. The bees ignored me and were focused only on their new home.
Here is an actual honey bee removal we did in Alpharetta. The following steps are typical for most of the removals we do, no matter where in a structure the bees are located.
First, we find the exact location of the hive. The bees were in the eaves next to the chimney. Usually in these situations, they will be on the lower side of the chimney where they can receive shade from the sun. Someone previously had tried to get rid of the bees and had caulked the bees' entry point with gobs of ugly white caulk. This did nothing to stop the bees. They were able to find another exit point and began using that instead.
Second, we remove the entire hive including bees, comb, and honey. The cavity is thoroughly scraped and cleaned out. Third, we will fill the void with insulation. This prevents honey bees from being able to establish a hive here in the future. This means no more honey bee problems in this exact location.
Finally, the access area is repaired. We use high quality clear caulk to seal the entry point between the brick and soffit. White caulk is used to repair the soffit boards. This can be easily painted over and will look as good as new.
Besides honey bee removals, we also receive calls for yellow jacket and hornet nest removals in Alpharetta. When dealing with yellow jackets, it is easy to get them confused with honey bees when they are nesting in a structure, especially if the entry point of the bees nest is located a story or two off the ground.
Yellow jackets will not only build nests in the ground but also in many locations of a house. I have seen them make nests 25 feet off the ground at times. The yellow jackets in this area are a little smaller than a honey bee, skinnier, have longer antennas, and have pronounced yellow and black stripes.
Yellow jackets usually show up in mid to late summer, whereas honey bees can show up in spring to early summer. If you are unsure if you have a honey bee or yellow jacket infestation, send a picture and details of the problem to get our expert bee identification. You can also check out our bee id page.
These yellow jackets made a nest in a birdhouse on the mantle of a back porch in Alpharetta. It was a large nest with a couple thousand yellow jackets. The family was having a birthday party for their daughter and wanted to use the back porch, when they discovered the nest. It was a good thing they didn't try to handle it on their own.
Yellow jackets can be just plain vicious. Even while wearing a bee suite I remember getting stung several times at this job. If you look closely at the bottom of the bird house, you can see parts of the yellow jacket's nest. It is light tan colored and papery looking.
One hornet nest we removed in Alpharetta was 30 feet off the ground. It was not noticed until February, after all the leaves had fallen off the tree.
This was a dead hornet nest from the previous year. Only hornet queens will survive the winter to build nests in new locations the following year. Old nests are not reused.
Always assume a hornet nest is highly active, especially if discovered between the months of June- September.
Southeast Bee Removal has been removing bees from Alpharetta since 2013. Contact us today for a fast free bee removal estimate. Thanks for taking the time to check us out.
